How It Ends
by Miss Alise
Summary: It has been a long six years since the day Ciel Phantomhive made a deal with the devil. During those years, Ciel was forced to learn that sometimes what you want isn't what you get, and doing what is right is very rarely painless. CielxSeb pre-slash.
1. And So It Begins

_A/N: Hello all! This is probably going to be one of the only author's notes in this fic, so let me get some things out of the way so you can continue with the story._

_First, this fic is complete. It is eight chapters long and a new chapter will be posted every week (that doesn't mean I won't appreciate reviews and suggestions, however, and I am not opposed to reworking the chapters I have already written). _

_Second, in this fic, Ciel is sixteen years old, and for the sake of my plotline, the circus arc has not happened, and what we find out in that arc has no bearing on my plot, except for Ciel's illness. Also, I have not seen the anime in its entirety, so all the facts/ideas are based off of the manga, which I have read up until the current chapter. As far as I can tell, the Sebastian from the anime is quite different from the one in the manga, so if he seems OOC to you and you're only familiar with the anime, that's probably why._

_Third, as of right now, we don't know the exact parameters of Ciel and Sebastian's deal, so I am making them up and they will be explained in further detail later on in the story._

_Fourth, this fic is loosely based off of a song by DeVotchKa, How It Ends (if you listen to it, you will understand how very appropriate it is for Kuroshitsuji) and lyrics will be posted with the chapters._

_This fic is pre-slash, so if that idea doesn't appeal to you, you have been warned._

_Also, this is rated 'T' for a reason, kiddies. Namely for some rather unpleasant violence._

_Now, without further ado, I present How It Ends._

Chapter 1: **A**nd.**S**o.**I**t.**B**egins.

_Just ask and you'll receive  
Beyond your wildest dreams..._

~-~-~

I was sick of this. I was sick of sitting in this bloody chair every goddamned day, reading reports filled with meaningless things that I already knew. I flipped pages without having any idea what was on the one before it. They all said the same thing anyway—The Phantom Company was prospering. As if I weren't already aware of that. The finances of the company are linked directly to my pocketbook, and it wouldn't take me very long to figure out if they were doing poorly.

"Why the hell am I _wasting my time?"_ I growled out, sweeping the reports onto the floor in an admittedly childish action. I had learned a long time ago to recognize when I was being immature. But I felt like being immature, dammit! I was so bored that a small part of me was afraid I might start ripping out my hair to entertain myself. My study, lavishly decorated in the finest mahogany furniture and the most beautiful handwoven tapestries, was beginning to feel more like a cell by the minute.

I looked up at the sound of the study door swinging open, and allowed myself to calm down a little at the sight of the tea cart pushed by Sebastian. His uniform was immaculate as always, with his vest and tailcoat neatly pressed and stainless. Sometimes his perfection made me want to kick him in the shin, but today, I knew, I was irritable enough that anything would bother me. If he were anything less than perfect, I would have wanted to kick him for that, too. The tea brewing on the cart smelled delicious, as it always did, and my stomach settled a bit in anticipation.

It was the middle of the winter, of the year 1892. I had turned sixteen years old less than two months ago, and I was slowly beginning to understand that life was as empty and dull as I thought it was back in 1885, when my parents had been murdered and I had foolishly made a deal with a devil. Even now, though, as the Earl of Phantomhive instead of just the heir-apparent, I could never bring myself to regret the decision to bind myself to Sebastian. Through the years, I would not have survived without him—that much I firmly believe. Sometimes, though, I wonder if my butler—my demon—can't see through my skin, to the heart inside my chest, blackened and dead from six years of constant disuse.

"It seems, Young Master, that your things have somehow ended up all over the floor again," Sebastian idly commented, as he stopped the cart next to my desk and began to pour tea into one of the ornate tea cups. Over the years, so many different sets of china had come and gone through this house that I barely even recognized them anymore.

"I grow tired of this, Sebastian. Give me something to divert my attention."

"A diversion, My Lord?" He asked, gently placing the cup and saucer on my desk and stirring in two lumps of sugar and a small bit of cream. "Are you not, perhaps, a bit old to be playing games and seeking out toys?" Sebastian's enigmatic smile spread across his face, sending shivers down my spine even as it toyed with my sense of danger. No matter how many times I saw that smile, it never failed to remind me that the man at my beck and call was not human, and never would be.

"I recall saying nothing of toys," I muttered distractedly, lifting the teacup to my mouth and taking a sip. My eyes weren't looking at the man standing beside me, rather, they were looking at the dirty gray winter sky, blanketing the world in a depression that only heightened my own. I wanted to tell him everything going through my mind, but I knew it was impossible for Sebastian to understand. Somehow, I didn't think immortal demons had much use for restlessness, and so I didn't bother to explain why my papers were scattered across the room.

"Perhaps, then, you would like to retire from work for the evening—I have often found that taking a break from something you dislike makes it less distasteful in the long run."

I murmured in agreement, allowing the sweet scent of the tea to drift into my nose and the soothing liquid to run down my throat.

"This is good, Sebastian. It has been a long time since you have given me a simple Earl Grey."

"I had brewed you a pot of Darjeeling, Young Master, but I heard the noise and thought you might want something a bit more comforting."

Sebastian took his customary place next to my wingback chair, and for the first time that day, I felt an emotion run through me that I might have described as happiness, if anyone had asked, but was most certainly at least a feeling of contentedness.

"Do they have tea where you come from, Sebastian? Is that why you make it so well?"

"...It is...difficult to explain," he said, after a moment of hesitation. "There is nothing in this world to compare it to, so you would not understand. But no, there is no tea."

I took another sip of the Earl Grey, swirling it around in the bottom of my cup.

"That sounds miserable."

"Indeed, My Lord."

For a few minutes, I allowed that feeling of contentedness to wash over me as Sebastian and I stood in comfortable, unassuming silence. Only the occasional clink of the fine porcelain disturbed that silence, and that was alright. For those few minutes, Sebastian understood me, and I understood him, but for some reason or other, that clarity made me sad.

~-~-~

The dinner that Sebastian had prepared was a delicious lamb stew, one which had been simmering over a slow fire all day in wait. The meat had been perfect and the potatoes had been tender, and I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed everything Sebastian cooked for me. Sometimes, I had to wonder where it was that my butler had learned to make such masterpieces out of food, but I had long ago filed that fact away as just another thing about him which I would never know.

I felt pleasantly lightheaded, because of the wine I'd allowed myself to drink at dinner—a wonderful vintage of red wine I'd brought back with me from the last mission I'd undertaken for the Queen. As a general rule, I rarely drank, but tonight was a special night. It was my mother's birthday, and for that reason no one was overly surprised that I had been more disgusted than I usually was with the tedium of my work, and no one made a comment when three glasses of the Cabernet Sauvignon had made their way down my throat over the course of the meal. I was sixteen years old, for Christ's sake, not to mention the head of the Phantomhive household. As far as I was concerned, I could drink whatever the hell I wanted to drink.

"I think I would like a bath tonight, Sebastian," I said, wiping my mouth one last time with my dinner napkin before laying it on my plate. He bowed low, his mouth stretching again into that horrible parody of a smile.

"Yes, My Lord. I shall have it ready for you when you return to your chambers."

"I have business to attend to, for about an hour or so. Please do not let the water get cold," I said, taking a final sip of my wine, savoring the flavor in my mouth before swallowing.

"Is this business outside of the manor? If you are leaving the house at night, I should accompany you. It is no longer safe for you to be wandering outside by yourself."

"No. Please stay here. This business is something which I must do on my own."

Sebastian nodded again, and Maylene, Finnie, and Bard all bowed low as I stood up and walked from the room. Knowing them, they probably stayed that way until they heard the slam of the front door as I left the house. All three of them held more loyalty to me than they had any reason to, I knew.

Looking back, I probably should have realized that they all knew where I was going, but back then I was still under the impression that my routines would remain secret as long as I didn't tell anyone about them. I had no reason to understand that the entirety of their jobs revolved around me, or that Finnie would see my footprints in the snow the next morning. By keeping Sebastian away, I thought I could keep my weakness from showing through.

The front walk was covered in a thin layer of ice, but I was used to it. I had spend my entire life in this mansion, after all, and many snowy afternoons had been spent playing on the grounds. It would have been odd if I couldn't even walk through my own property without falling on my ass. Of course, it quickly became obvious that the ice was the least of my worries, because I had forgotten to retrieve my thick, winter coat from the front entryway. I was so used to having Sebastian take care of me, I suppose, that I tended to forget things on the rare occasions when he wasn't.

It had been more than a couple of hours since the sun had set below the horizon, and far off in the distant forests I could hear the wild howl of a wolf split through the frozen silence. I wasn't frightened—it had been a very long time since I had truly been frightened—but I felt a twinge of phantom fear left over from the days when the blackness outside my bedroom window seemed like the most frightening thing in the world. Before I knew what it was like to be truly scared.

I shoved my hands into my pockets.

Although I had told Sebastian that I planned on being gone for an hour, it wouldn't take much longer than five minutes to reach my destination, and every year the amount of time I actually spent there was different. Sometimes I found myself lost for hours, and sometimes I got so disgusted with myself that I left within minutes. It was like I tossed a coin the moment I stepped through the gates.

Surrounding the Phantomhive Family Cemetery, there was an ornate, filigreed iron fence, and the gates were large and imposing, reaching ten feet or more into the sky. I didn't really believe that anyone would take the time to come all the way out to this estate to steal some half-rotted bones, but I kept the gates locked just in case. I kept the key in my right vest pocket, and it was the only key I kept on my person at all times.

I slid it out of the woolen fabric, and fitted it firmly into the slightly rusty lock.

Pushing the gate open, I stepped onto the previously untouched snow that blanketed the cemetery. As the last surviving member of the Phantomhive line, I was the only one who would bother making footprints in the powder to visit long dead relatives. Finnie had a key to the gates as well, but he was under strict orders to tend to the small plot of land only once a month, and he had a respite during the winter months when the snow made his job rather ridiculous.

As I approached the row of graves where I knew I would find my parent's names, I was struck with the question of whether I would get to be buried by their sides one day. The exact parameters of my deal with Sebastian had never been discussed to that length—would stealing my soul steal my body as well? Would my bones find rest next to those of my parents? Somehow, I found that I was better off without knowing. At that thought, the first flakes of silken snow began to drift from the clouds, landing like little needles in my exposed skin, but I could not feel them. In a place like this, where I was the only one left capable of feeling physical discomfort, there was no place for it.

I refused to speak to the headstones, just as I aways did. I knew that my parents had long since left this world, and that underneath the half foot of snow and six feet of dirt, there lay two caskets with empty husks resting inside. Still, I felt the need to pay some sort of homage to their memory, and these plain marble stones were the only thing I had left of them.

For the past five years, I had pulled the little iron key out of my pocket and opened the cemetery gates twice a year. Once for my mother, once for my father. Rachel and Lord Vincent Phantomhive. Never once had I let Sebastian step a single toe inside the perimeter—even without his smile, I never forgot that he was a demon.

Snow had piled on top of the headstones, and I brushed it off gently with my numb fingers. The letters had been carved into the marble in such a way that even through the thin layer of white the lettering what still easily visible. Of course, I knew the images by heart, anyway.

On nights like these, when the world seemed so silent that I could simply disappear into the nothingness that surrounded me, I questioned my faith. I had summoned Sebastian with the knowledge that I would be forsaken by God, if such a being even exists, but I hoped that my defection would have no negative impact on those who had borne me. Wherever my parents were, I hoped that they happy, and warm.

As the snow fell around me, I turned my face up to meet it and closed my eyes against the onslaught.

"Mother, can you forgive your foolish son?"

~-~-~

When I finally returned to the manor, the clock had just finished announcing the ninth hour, my clothes were soaked, and I was shivering from the cold that had seeped onto every bit of my skin.

"Young Master, if you would not let me come with you, you should have at the very least brought a pair of gloves as your escort."

Sebastian looked vaguely unhappy with me, an expression that I had seen on his face only a few times over the years.

"I am not in the mood to be chastised tonight, Sebastian. Is my bath ready?"

"Yes, My Lord," he said, bowing lightly to me even though his lips were still pursed together.

I brushed past him, heading up the grand staircase that leads to the upper floors. Usually I was glad that my chambers were so far away from the front doors—it gave me more time to prepare for unexpected guests—but tonight every foot seemed to stretch into a mile.

Just as I was passing the library, I felt a hand at my knee and another at the small of my back, and my feet were lifted off the floor as Sebastian scooped me into his arms.

"Please allow me to carry you, Young Master. The more quickly we can get you to the bath, the better—it would not be seemly for your asthma to take hold again due to my negligence."

I sighed as I felt the soft fabric of his overcoat rub against my cheek, wanting to tell Sebastian to put me down. I wanted to protest that I was sixteen years old and had been perfectly capable of walking on my own for the better part of those sixteen years. I wanted to act for a moment as though I had some fight, some pride, left in my body. But I wasn't sure I did, and because of that I could not find the energy to protest.

"This is not appropriate behavior, Sebastian," was all I managed to say.

"Even so, My Lord," was his reply.

At his speedy pace, it only took us a few moments more to reach the master suite. He had taken the time before I returned to light a crackling fire in the fireplace and to fold the room in a soft glow with the many candles around its perimeter, and the moment we stepped through the door, I was assaulted by precious heat. Skipping the bedroom, he headed straight to the bathroom, and it wasn't until he was standing directly next to the bath the I finally felt my feet touch the ground again.

I couldn't take my eyes off the gently steaming water, even though I felt Sebastian's hands at the buttons of my clothing. As each layer fell away, and more and more of my pale, clammy skin was revealed, the cold air seemed to nip at me like a feral beast, and my shivers increased. I was shaking so badly, in fact, that when it came time for Sebastian to undo the buttons at my wrist, my arm slipped out of his grip twice.

"I apologize, Young Master."

The last of my clothing fell to the floor in a puddle of fabric, and Sebastian didn't even bother picking it up and folding it before leading me into the bath. The water on my skin felt more heavenly than I thought possible, and it helped to ease the tightness in my chest that had been slowly worsening over the past hour.

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I let you leave the house in the middle of the night without so much as a scarf around your neck. As your butler, that is unforgivable. Are you trying to help with fulfilling our bargain so soon?"

I sighed back into the tub, letting the water wrap around me like the softest liquid blanket, and closed my eyes.

"Tonight was none of your concern. I told you to stay here, and you would not have been allowed to accompany me even if you had pressed the matter. As far as I know, none of my extremities have fallen off, and to me that means you did your job. Let it go."

I felt my hand being lifted out of the water, and a sponge began to gently clean my skin. I took the silence to mean that Sebastian would not argue with me, though he also probably didn't agree. It was a method that we had perfected after learning how incredibly stubborn we both were, and we'd been refining it for the past six years.

"I wish that you had allowed me to go to that place with you at least once," he said, moving the sponge delicately up my arm. I remained quiet, understanding without conscious thought that the warmth of the water and the emotional severity of the day, along with the cold and the wine from earlier, had combined to make me quite tired. As Sebastian cleaned the dirt away from my skin, I could feel myself begin to slip into a light doze, with only the sound of the water sloshing quietly to interrupt me.

It was half an hour later that my bath had been finished, and the heat had completely returned to my body. The shivering had ceased, and, even though I still felt the tightness in my chest, the calm that always followed a trip to the cemetery had finally set in fully. I sat in front of my mirror, dragging a comb haphazardly through my hair. A fresh nightshirt had been slipped over my shoulders, and Sebastian was walking through the room, dousing the candles to prepare the room for sleep.

"Sebastian?"

"Yes, My Lord?" he answered, turning away from his task and walking towards me. In the mirror, our eyes met for a moment, but I looked away from the scrutiny.

"When I look in the mirror, I do not recognize my face. Is that very strange?" I reached a hand up to stroke my cheek, smoothing the skin as though it were the softest fur. "I open my eyes and expect to see a ten year old boy staring back at me. Somehow, the last six years have gone by without me noticing them, and even with the debts I've incurred, I can find nothing worthwhile that I have gained from those years. I find myself becoming restless."

Sebastian came up behind me, and I felt his hands land on my shoulders. His reflection loomed in the mirror, and our eyes met again, and I couldn't turn away.

"Is it not possible, Young Master, that you are becoming restless because you know I will be collecting that debt, soon?"

He could have said it with arrogance, or triumph—after all, he deserved it—but Sebastian's words were strangely neutral. A simple suggestion.

"Perhaps. But you know I have never feared death. I think..." I trailed off, my eyes dropping to where my thin hands were folded across my lap. "I think I am being a bit childish, really. I don't want you to leave me."

His hand lifted from my shoulders and began threading through my freshly washed hair. The silk from his kid-gloves made the thin, black strands fall back onto my small neck, and I felt a shiver run down my spine as they brushed my skin. Even though I wasn't looking at him, I could still feel his eyes on me. Those red irises seemed to follow me wherever I went.

"You know I will never leave you—we have a deal, do we not? But, of course, the only one who really knows what you are feeling is yourself," he said, "and I can only say that the Phantomhive heir-apparent who I once knew and the Lord Phantomhive who I know now are both very different and very much the same. Sometimes, My Lord, without us realizing it, the things which we thought to keep locked away inside of us come to the surface and show on our faces."

For some reason, his comment disturbed me. I had grown so used to living behind my facade that sometimes even I forgot it was there. I didn't like the thought that the Ciel Phantomhive which I had striven so hard to lock away might come back and influence me—I couldn't afford to be that child anymore.

"Maybe. But regardless, you were right in the first place. None of this is going to matter in a few months anyway. My debt is high."

I stood and walked over to my bed, and sunk down onto the soft, pillow-like mattress. He tucked the blankets around me, in a half-hearted attempt to keep out the cold. Picking up the snuffer, he returned to the candles, extinguishing them one by one, and I watched his thin back that betrayed none of the super-human strength that lay beneath his jacket. I could feel my eyes closing with the weight of my exhaustion, but I forced them to stay open.

"You must be...very hungry by now, Sebastian."

He didn't reply, but he and I both knew that it wasn't a statement that needed an answer.

"Sleep well, Young Master," he said, as the last candle flickered out and he shut the bedroom doors.

~-~-~

The next morning I woke to the brightness of freshly fallen snow, even though the sky itself was the same dirty gray. Sebastian had pulled back the curtains which he had shut the night before, and the smell of freshly brewed tea filled the room. I could not remember a morning when I had not woken like this. The days before my parent's deaths were often blurred and sometimes I couldn't remember them at all, so the sight of Sebastian's always immaculate uniform and raven's-wing hair was what I thought of when I thought of waking up.

"I brought you your post, My Lord. It seems that you have received another summons from the Queen."

He unbuttoned my nightshirt, and the room disappeared for a moment as he lifted it over my head. He had picked out an outfit for me to wear that was warm and comfortable, but it was obvious to me that it was also an outfit picked for an outing. These days, I rarely went into London itself, but when the Queen asked me to go, I couldn't refuse.

"A summons? Did you read it?"

"Yes. I do not quite know what to make of it. You also have an invitation from the Countess of Trivolt, for her annual winter ball, as well as a letter from the manager of your company warehouse in Paris," he said with a smile. He handed me the Queen's letter while pouring me a cup of tea, and I unfolded it and began to read as I took a sip.

_Dear Lord Phantomhive,_

_ Recently in London Proper, there has been a string of strange disappearances. As of this moment, five children from noble families have been taken. These disappearances have made things most difficult, as the families targeted seem to be, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the lines most close to Her Majesty. She has decided that she cannot stand idly by and watch those who she respects and cares for suffer. So, the royal house asks you, as a member of the loyal Phantomhive line, to look into this matter. The children targeted have been between the ages of seven and thirteen, and have been taken from their beds in the middle of the night. These are the only details available to us. A list of the families and their main attributes has been included with this letter, and we ask that you study it carefully. When you believe you are ready, we shall await your personal arrival in London._

_Most sincerely,_

_Baron Franklin Stuart_

_On behalf of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria_

I refolded the letter, letting another sip of the tea tip into my mouth. Disappearances were not usually something that warranted Phantomhive assistance—Scotland Yard, despite the rumors, was actually quite competent—but the fact that the Queen had asked for my assistance at all meant that she suspected something deeper was at work, perhaps something darker than just simple kidnappings. To summon the help of "the evil nobleman" was not something that was done on a whim.

"Well, Sebastian, it seems that my interest is piqued. Please ready the carriage—we will be leaving shortly."

"Yes, My Lord," he said, bowing lightly, his smile never leaving his face. My butler, it seemed, enjoyed the thrill of the chase just as much I did.

~-~-~


	2. A Heartbeat And An Encounter

_A/N: I have never been to London. So, please keep in mind that any perception I have of London could be completely wrong. Also, later on in the story I'll mention a few other real places which I could only do cursory research about. So, if you notice something that doesn't make any sense, please cut my ignorant non-European self some slack._

Chapter 2: **A.H**eartbeat.**A**nd.**A**n.**E**ncounter.

_And you already know  
Yes, you already know  
How this will end..._

~-~-~

Even now, I very rarely regret leaving the manor that day. Sometimes, though, on those strange nights when the house around me is so quiet that I cannot find rest, I allow a small sliver of guilt into my heart.

~-~-~

"Please take care of yourself, Young Master!" Maylene and Bard were standing in the doorway of Phantomhive Manor, waving happily and allowing the heated air from inside to mingle with the frigid cold of the January countryside. Finnie stood on the steps, with a shovel in one hand and a battered winter cap in the other. Tanaka, bundled up in so many layers that he was virtually unrecognizable except for the mustache poking out from under his hat, was already situated at the reins of the carriage, ready for the long hours it would take to drive Sebastian and me to London.

"Do try to not ruin my house while I am away," I told them, with a stern look in their direction to emphasize my point. I knew that when I came back there would probably still be fire damage, or damage from explosives, or thousands of pounds worth of ruined china, but that had never really bothered me all that much. After all, the Phantomhive pocketbook could afford it.

With a quiet sigh, I took one last look at the manor, never forgetting that in my line of work there was always the possibility that I might never get to see it again. I also had to remember that Phantomhives had no room for regret, and with that thought I turned around and headed for the carriage without another word to my servants.

I never did let them know how much I valued them, though I liked to believe that somehow they still knew. Even though they wrecked the house more often than they took care of it, I still thought of them as people who were important to me. In the same way that we never spoke about what had happened in their pasts and yet the knowledge still weighed heavily between us, we never spoke about how indispensable they were to the survival of the Phantomhive line.

I walked past Sebastian, where he was holding the carriage door open for me, and stepped up into the cabin. The seats were as comfortable as it was possible to make them, but, with the rough handling of the carriage and the horribly bumpy roads that stretched from here to London, it would still not be a very enjoyable ride. Next to me, Sebastian latched the door shut and relaxed against the dark blue velvet of the seat.

"You know asking those three not to destroy the house is like asking a skilled hunting dog to ignore a rabbit that darts onto the path, Young Master," he said. Below us, the wheels began turning as Tanaka urged the horses into motion.

"I know. But somehow I feel better knowing that I did my best, even if their promises never amount to anything more than empty words," I replied.

He nodded, but didn't say anything more. One of the things which I simultaneously appreciated and loathed about Sebastian was that he could sit in complete silence and be completely comfortable. Because I had never learned to be social, rotting away in my countryside mansion with only five regular companions, I needed someone who could understand the virtue of silence. That was the main problem I had with Elizabeth—she loved the sound of her voice so much that she never stopped talking.

Unfortunately, Sebastian's comfort with silence meant that sometimes I was left wanting.

While the world had slept the night before, the snow which had followed me to my parent's graves had dissipated, leaving an overcast sky and temperatures that would have frozen a man to death in minutes. The countryside was covered in a thick blanket of the freshly fallen snow, but Tanaka managed to keep the carriage trundling forward, no matter how agonizing the pace was. Inside the carriage wasn't much warmer, but we were protected from the wind that rustled the tree branches, and my body heat did a passable job of warming the air inside. When I turned to look out the window, I had to squint past the frost, and my breath quickly fogged the glass too thickly for me to see more than vague outlines and blurred shapes.

"Her Majesty would have understood if you had declined this case. The trip to London takes five hours on a good day, and with the snow that number will likely double. Considering your asthma, perhaps we should have stayed home." He smiled his torturous smile at me, taking note of the way my fingers shook and how often I adjusted my coat more tightly around me. Even though Sebastian had noticed how cold I was, I had somehow managed to keep him from realizing that last night's visit to the cemetery had also taken a toll on my detestably fragile physical condition. If he knew that my asthma were acting up, he never would have let me take the carriage ride to London.

"It is not my job to disregard the orders of The Queen, Sebastian. It is simply my duty to carry them out." I held back a cough, taking that moment to fiddle with my coatfront so he might not see the tremors that ran through my chest. "Regardless, it is too late to turn around now. Although, why you would want to is a mystery to me—do you even realize how cold it is?"

Despite the air inside the carriage being so cold that my breath puffed out in small clouds with each exhale, Sebastian was as stoic and unaffected as always. The only sign that he might be influenced by the cold weather was that his breath was just as clouded as mine was.

"Of course, Young Master. It is the middle of January, after all."

Often times I wondered if my butler wasn't the most infuriating man in the entirety of Europe. In the six years that I'd known him, he had only rarely answered the questions I'd asked of him with any real sort of answer. Sebastian loved to get away with evasive words and half-truths—as though it were the only way of relieving my hold over him, and that bothered some innate part of me. Maybe my pride, or maybe something different. Why was it so hard for him to answer with straight words?

"Hm," I muttered, letting my stoic face hide any rogue emotions as they fluttered through my mind. With the carriage wheels trundling along the bumpy road and the cabin floor vibrating beneath my feet, I held back another cough and settled back into the seat once again.

~-~-~

On the way into London, the city's flaring skirts were always the first indication that we would soon be reaching London Proper. When the first dilapidated houses began appearing outside of the carriage window, it meant that we had a couple of hours—an hour and a half, on a good day—left before Tanaka would pull us to a jolting stop outside of my London townhouse.

Prince Soma and his butler Agni had returned to India a couple of years ago, and since their departure I hadn't hired anyone else to take care of my London residence. Because of that, I knew that there would be no fire laid in the rooms, and my bedsheets would smell musty and disused. I knew that there would be no food in the pantry except the barest of essentials, and the windows would be dirty and possibly cracked. There would probably be mice.

But, I thought, looking over at Sebastian where he sat across from me, his head elegantly resting on his gloved hand, I didn't have a demon butler for nothing. Even though the house wasn't taken care of very well, Sebastian would be able to put it to rights in a very short time. The tea I would have that night—only the freshest tea, of course—would be accompanied with delicious baked goods regardless of how little food was currently in the cupboards. My butler took good care of me, even if I had to constantly remind myself that it was only for the sake of the contract.

The snow had slowed our progress considerably, and by the time I began seeing the familiar surroundings of Outer London, the sun had gone down and the temperature inside the carriage had dropped along with it. Underneath the thick layers of woolen fabric, I shivered. In that moment, the thought of a raging fire and warm bed sheets seemed like the best thing in the world.

Below our feet, I could feel the carriage wheels slow to a stop, and the cabin jerked forward slightly.

"Stay here, My Lord. We are not scheduled to stop before we reach your townhouse." Sebastian stood up, pushing lightly on my shoulder when I would have stood up with him. He had to stoop slightly to avoid hitting his head on the carriage ceiling, but soon enough he was stepping out into the cold winter air with the carriage door swinging shut behind him.

From inside, I could hear the soft murmurs of Sebastian and another voice which I did not recognize. I didn't know everyone in the greater London area, of course, but it still seemed odd that Tanaka would stop for a complete stranger. I tapped my foot against the wooden floor and pulled back the curtain trying to see through, but the mixture of the frost snaking across the glass and my own foggy breath made it impossible. As I stood up and opened the carriage door, I comforted myself with the fact that, as the Queen's Watchdog, it was my duty to be nosy.

The cold air hit me like a solid wall when I stepped down from the stairs, instantly sticking its frozen fingers wherever it could find a gap in my coat. Pulling the fabric more tightly around me, I looked toward Sebastian.

The slightly disturbed look on his face was enough to raise my defenses, and inside my ribcage my heart began to thrum steadily faster.

The man standing next to my two attendants couldn't have been more than two or three years older than I was. His sandy brown hair fell in soft layers across his face, and his features were veiled lightly in shadow. His hands—ungloved but obviously well cared for—were held in front of his chest in a gesture of surprise as well as a declaration that he had nothing to hide.

Even though you wouldn't have been able to see it from my expression, my curiosity was piqued by the man. Not only was he very attractive—though his brown eyes that sat just above a thick layer of freckles made him much more pretty than handsome—but that he was able to drag any sort of reaction out of Sebastian, no matter how small, was remarkable in itself.

"Don't get so defensive! All I'm saying is that going to London right now is a bad idea."

"I don't have time to deal with you right now. Get out of the way."

The man smirked, the left side of his mouth lifting in a mocking way, and it contorted his pleasant features into something strangely just as attractive but much more dangerous. He folded his hands behind his head, and I noticed that, in addition to not wearing any gloves, he wore nothing more than a thin overcoat to protect him from the freezing temperatures.

"So temperamental. You never used to be so high-strung, B—," Sebastian cut him off,

"Don't speak to me like a friend, Simon. My name is Sebastian, now."

I raised an eyebrow, my curiosity even more roused. Before I could decide whether or mot it would be a good idea to join my attendants, my eyes locked onto Simon's brown ones and refused to look away. Through his gaze, I thought I could feel something coming toward me, something dangerous and tempting, and a shiver raced down my spine.

"Oh, and who is this?" he said, brushing past Sebastian even while the smirk fell from his face to be replaced by an arrogant smile. "Your next snack, perhaps? Oh no, wait, this must be the Earl. The little Phantonhive with the big dog-collar around his throat."

His eyes never left mine, despite the distance between us that became shorter every moment. Even knowing that he was probably a threat to me, I didn't move.

"Cat got your tongue, little Phantomhive?"

Of all the things in my life which I hated—and there weren't as many as you might expect, given my circumstances—the one thing I hated more than almost anything else was being treated like a child. It had been a very, very long time since I had considered myself one, but too many people saw my small stature and delicate features and decided that they needed to treat me with kid gloves. The only one who I allowed the privilege was Sebastian, and only when we were alone and I was feeling particularly listless.

"Right now, I would like nothing better than to continue on to London, where my townhouse and my assignment are waiting for me. Unfortunately, you are in our way, so..." I trailed off, gesturing pointedly to the side of the road. Underneath my unwavering gaze and steady voice, the hairs on my neck were standing on end, and I was more nervous than I had any obvious reason to be. Something about Simon's presence was so much different than Sebastian's, even though at their base they were almost similar.

When Simon's hand slowly lifted toward my face, my eyes widened.

"I wouldn't do that, Simon," Sebastian said, his supernatural speed having carried him over to us in a split second. His gloved hand was wrapped firmly around Simon's wrist.

"He is a pretty one, isn't he?" he said, his fingers slowly curling in toward his palm. Sebastian dropped his hand, and as it fell back to his side something in his eyes changed, and the nervousness that had been completely controlling me only seconds before all but evaporated. "Maybe he's worth it. What's your name, little Phantomhive?"

I took a moment to steady my breathing, my face remaining impassive, then locked eyes with him again.

"Ciel."

"Ciel...do try to take good care of your butler, won't you? He isn't nearly as infallible as he would like everyone to believe."

"Simon..." Sebastian growled out a warning, but the other man had already begun walking away, and in the fading light it wasn't long before we couldn't see him at all. "Tanaka, we have already lost too much time with this delay. We must make haste to London."

It was much more significant than I was capable of understanding at that point that he didn't wait for me to climb into the carriage before he disappeared into it himself. The only thought in my head was of the rare opportunity to discreetly cough without him being able to hear.

~-~-~

Once we were through the outskirts, we were finally in London proper. After a grueling nine hours sitting on a carriage, my backside had lost all feeling and I was seriously doubting if my legs would ever be able to carry my full weight again. The incident with Simon, whoever he was, had given my brain something to obsess over, but I wasn't sure that mental discomfort was any better than physical. I knew Sebastian kept things from me—I would have been stupid not to understand that—but I didn't like the idea than an entire conversation could happen without me following a single word. My pride didn't take to it very well.

Looking out the window, I recognized some of the buildings enough to know that we only had another five minutes or so left before reaching the townhouse. Looking at Sebastian, I couldn't help the curiosity that ran through my body like the blood in my veins.

"Let me see your hand."

He looked at me, breaking out of the silent reverie he'd been trapped in.

"Excuse me, My Lord?"

"Take off your glove, I want to see your hand," I said. My eyes never wavered from the window, but I left no room for argument in my tone.

As he pulled the white fabric from his fingers with his teeth, I could feel his gaze on me, burning a hole in my side.

"Surely you need no reassurance about the mark of our contract. You know nothing can change it until both of us have fulfilled our end."

"Show me your right hand, if you care so much. It does not matter to me." He pulled off the left glove anyway, partly, I think, because he had already mostly removed it, and partly because he liked to show off the contract on occasion—though, I never could figure out why.

I held out my own hand, and in a moment I felt the warm skin of his palm flat against mine.

The curiosity that had been aching in my gut was left over from that morning, but had been heavily inflamed by the visit of the other demon. Neither Simon nor Sebastian had said it explicitly, but it was obvious. The Phantomhives hadn't gotten to be the Queen's Watchdogs by being idiots.

Simon had stood there in the freezing cold, seemingly completely unaffected by the weather. His light jacket would have been inadequate for me even in the end of spring, and it was currently the middle of winter. Sebastian had brought up the temperature in conversation only because he knew it would aggravate my asthma.

I was surprised by the warmth of his hand. It was understated, much less warm than mine was, but still not the coldness I was expecting. The contract gleamed up at me, blood-red and perfect, offset by the pale color of his skin and the black of his fingernails. In all the years I had known him, I had very rarely seen his bare hands. He liked to keep them covered, and when he did remove his gloves he never touched me, like there was something he didn't want me to find out.

My gaze was drawn to a long, thin, white scar that rested next to his thumb on his pointer finger. It seemed to be the only thing—except for the contract—that marred his skin. Almost without me realizing it, my heartbeat had begun to beat just a little bit faster.

"So you do feel the cold, Sebastian."

"Of course, Young Master," he said, smirking, "it is the middle of January, after all."

He pulled his hand back from me and put his white glove back on just as the carriage rolled to a halt in front of my London residence. I couldn't interpret the look on his face anymore than I ever could. He was too secretive, and he'd had too many years to learn how to school his features for me to be able to see past his facade.

I called his name as he stood, and he turned toward me as he opened the door.

"What was the other demon going to call you? Before you told him your new name?"

He smiled at me, and it sent the same thrill down my spine that it always did.

"Who I was, like everything else that happened before I met you, is of no importance any more."

Inside was just as cold as I thought it would be, but Sebastian instantly disappeared to see to the preparations, and as I took off my overcoat, I wondered if it were truly possible to shed one's past in the same way that one took off a jacket when they no longer needed its warmth.

~-~-~


	3. The Loyalty Of A Dog

Chapter 3: **T**he.**L**oyalty.**O**f.**A.D**og.

_And in your heart  
You know it to be true  
You know what you gotta do  
They all depend on you..._

~-~-~

The next morning found me at my desk, idly flipping through the information The Queen had given me on the case. Of the five kidnapped children, I knew four of them personally and had met one for a brief moment the last time I'd been in London. None of their families were anything particularly interesting—nothing illicit or dangerous in their backgrounds, to speak of—and, for all I could see, the kidnappings seemed quite random save for their obvious isolation to the upper class.

I took a sip of my tea—Golden Needle Black today, one of my favorites—and swirled the last teaspoon or so of liquid casually around the bottom of my teacup, pointedly ignoring the way my hand gently shook, as though a lack of attention would make it go away. Turning my thoughts back to the case, I tuned out my personal discomfort. I didn't much care for the children's parents, but none of the children themselves had done anything wrong. In fact, if memory served, I had rather liked most of them. Not to mention the reasoning that there hadn't been any sign of ransom notes yet, and if the kidnappers weren't after money it was quite possible that they were after something much more sinister.

I shivered, resisting the urge to worry at the suddenly tender patch of skin on my back. Sometimes my missions for the Queen brought back memories of things I would much rather forget.

"Young Master, you seem distracted today. Might I suggest that we begin our search tomorrow?" Sebastian walked through the room, tidying it from my restless night. "I doubt anything of excitement is going to happen between now and then."

There was no way for him to know, of course. Sebastian, despite his myriad other talents, couldn't see the future. Both of us were well aware that any delay in our investigations could very easily leave another child open to whatever predator were stalking them.

Drinking the last sip of tea from the bottom of my cup, I gently set it back on its saucer and swallowed heavily.

The picture sitting in front of me on my desk was of a family of four, obviously very well off nor reluctant in the least to show it. On a heavily padded armchair sat a man with frighteningly red hair on his head and a long black cane draped across his knee. Standing next to him, I recognized his wife, Cecilia Gundermoore, looking just as lovely as the day I had first met her something like eight years ago. In the years since then, she hadn't seemed to age one bit, despite having borne the two children who sat on the floor in front of her husband, looking unwaveringly at the camera and sitting with the rigid straightness that English society demanded of them.

On the left was the girl I was interested in for the purposes of the case. Her name, according both to the file and to my memories, was Clair Gundermoore, and she was eight years old. Her red hair was slightly more understated than her father's was, and she was really quite pretty. She was a rather funny girl, as well, and if anyone could have taught me how to laugh again, it would have been Clair. Unfortunately, she was currently in no position to remind me, and I had long since forgotten how.

As I closed the folder, my resolve was reaffirmed. However, if I were to trick Sebastian into letting me go, there was something I had to do, first.

"Leave me for a while, Sebastian," I said, scratching lightly at the sleeve of the white nightshirt I had yet to change out of.

"Is there anything you need before I go?" He asked. Now that I had decided to get it out of my system, my chest felt like it was going to completely implode if I didn't manage to cough in the next fifteen seconds. I had to ask myself why it happened that the one time I wanted Sebastian to obey me without question was also the one time he decided to hesitate.

"No. Please, just go. Make sure we are ready to begin our investigation once I am done here."

"Understood, My Lord. I shall ready the carriage," he replied, bowing lightly, and he left, shutting the door behind him. I waited for the tell-tale click of his shoes on the parquet floor of the hallway, as they moved farther and farther away. When he was finally out of earshot, I stood, and made my way back to my bed.

Inside the top drawer of my bedside table, there were three things. The first was a golden locket, attached to a fine golden chain, which contained a picture of my mother on the left half and one of my father on the right. I couldn't wear it—in my line of work, things like that got lost too easily—and I couldn't keep it at the Phantomhive mansion, either, for many different reasons. The second item was a knife, and the third was something Sebastian had given to me after my last asthma attack: my inhaler.

It was one of two, really. I kept one at the mansion and one at the townhouse, just so I would have it if I ever needed it. It was a wretched thing, really. I hated it. The medicine inside it made me ridiculously hungry, and whenever I was forced to take it, my thoughts became so muddled that I couldn't think straight for hours afterwards. But, I knew I had to use it. If I wanted Sebastian to ignore the subtle signs of my illness which he'd almost definitely noticed by now, I had to do something to keep it under control.

The inhaler consisted of a glass base, inside of which was a dry sponge and a sealed container of the loathed medicine. Attached to the base was a long, thin tube, which ended in an uncomfortable piece of material that fit tightly over my mouth. From the first moment I'd laid eyes on it, I had viewed it more as some barbaric torture device than something that might potentially save my life. Curling my fingers tightly around it, always mindful of the fact that if I broke it then I would truly be in trouble, I headed to the one place where I thought Sebastian might not hear me—the bathroom.

I tried to focus on how cold my feet were as they padded across the floor, or the way my nightshirt brushed against my skin, but nothing could distract me from the tightness in my chest—the quickening of my breath and the sudden constricting feeling of my lungs being too big to fit inside my ribs. I pushed open the French doors that separated my bedroom from my bathroom, shivering heavily when the cold air from the unheated room hit me like a slap in the face.

The first time I ever used my inhaler, I had thought pretty seriously about jumping out of my bedroom window so I would never have to do it again. I had been completely unprepared for the way it would affect me. For the same reason that I rarely drank alcohol, despite being in a situation when no one expected me to abstain, I hated my asthma medication.

With shaking hands, I twisted the top off the medicine bottle and poured half of it onto the dry sponge. Once the mouthpiece was situated over my lips, I stepped into the bathtub and curled myself into a ball on the porcelain floor. I wasn't worried about Sebastian finding me—he wouldn't come back until I called him to do so—but I needed to get as much out of the day as possible. I didn't want to waste more time holed away in my bathroom than I absolutely needed to.

I breathed in, tasting the sterility of the medicine as it drifted past my tongue. Pulling it away from my face, I placed the hated contraption on the lip of the bathtub, and waited.

When the first cough bubbled up through my chest, I met it with both relief and dread. I closed my eyes and imagined Sebastian's voice in my head, telling me to breathe, to calm down, but it didn't help very much. I knew, and this was why I had sent him away, why I had refused to let him see my discomfort. He would blame both of us for this. He would blame me for going outside without proper clothing, and he would blame himself for letting me. Sebastian's disappointment—something I had only seen two or three times in my life—was something which I never wanted to see again, if I could avoid it.

The coughs came hard and fast now that I was letting them out. Within a few minutes, my throat was exhausted, and the coolness of the bathtub was pressing tightly against the skin of my cheek. I couldn't decide whether I liked the sensation or not. After a while, once my breathing began to slow down and the spasms began to subside, I curled my legs up to my chest, closing my eyes for what I promised would be just a moment.

I must have fallen into unconsciousness somehow, or at least dropped into a heavy enough doze that I became unaware of the time as it passed. The medicine traveling through my system was supposed to stimulate me, but I was just...so tired. Even though I thought I might have somewhere important to be, I couldn't force my eyes to open again. I'd been awake for less than an hour, and already I wanted to crawl back into bed and situate myself so far into the covers that I could barely breathe.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been all that surprised when I felt a hand on the small of my back, just below the marred skin that I had ever only allowed Sebastian to see. For all I knew, I'd been curled up at the bottom of my bathtub for the entire day, and my butler had been standing outside with the carriage for hours.

"Do you feel the bite of the collar around your throat, Young Master?" He asked, using his fingers to repeatedly smooth a pattern down my back. Somehow, I believed I could feel the newly discovered warmth of his hand through the two layers of fabric that separated his skin from mine, and I let my eyes fall shut again. "Is it painful?"

Despite the distaste behind his words, he tucked his hands around me and lifted me from the bathtub. Under his feet, I could hear the crunch of glass.

"Did I..." I trailed off, hoping that my voice sounded more confident and sure to my butler than it did inside my head.

"Yes. You broke it. Hopefully I can find a pharmacy with an extra available."

I thought I could hear disappointment in the way he spoke—in the way his fingers were tense as they dug into my side.

"I'm sorry, Sebastian," I said, as he pulled back the covers and lowered me back onto my bed. He didn't answer, instead he doused the lights and left the room, and I was alright without having his reply. After all, I'm not sure that I understood what I was apologizing for anyway.

~-~-~

"_Sebastian..."_

_I opened my eyes to the feeling of a soft hand stroking my cheek, brushing the hair back from my forehead. I was resting on my side, and under my body was another, cloaked in the finest black wool._

"_Today was a very long day, Ciel. You should rest."_

"_No." Somehow, I knew that wasn't what I wanted. "I don't want to rest anymore."_

_His fingers moved down my throat, over my thin shoulders and onto my back. I could feel his touch getting closer and closer to where I knew the brand rested, though it had been on my skin for so long that I couldn't physically feel it anymore._

"_Please, don't..."_

_He ignored me, and his fingers began to trace around the circle, trailing over the hypersensitive skin around the scar tissue. I couldn't stop the shiver that raced down my spine, and his other hand came up to my face, gently untying the patch that rested over my eye._

_I looked up at him, watching his violent red eyes as they rested their gaze on my burnt, wretched skin. It itched under his gaze, the phantom pain of a wound that had closed a very long time ago._

"_It's ugly."_

"_You are the Earl of Phantomhive. Would you stand for it, if it were truly ugly?"_

_My eye patch dropped to the ground, the softest noise, yet it broke the silence as I stared into the red of his irises. The contract in my right eye kept everything in perfect clarity, from the way his bangs swept softly across his forehead to the tilt of his chin._

"_The Phantomhives live for ugliness, Sebastian. The only difference between our own and that of the world is that ours is usually kept locked up tight inside of us, together in our chests with all the other unsavory things that we'd rather leave forgotten."_

"_Like this?" He asked, trailing his fingers across my eyelid, skimming slowly over the violet, ringed pentagram. "Does it surprise you, when you look in the mirror? Do you try to forget?"_

_I lifted my hand to cover his where it rested on my brow, smoothing my thumb over the bloodied skin of his contract._

_  
"Forgetting about the contract would be the same as losing you, wouldn't it?"_

_  
"Of course. But, so would remembering it."_

_I sighed, closing my eyes against the sudden tightness in my chest._

"_I don't want to lose you at all..."_

_Suddenly, I felt the familiar warmth of his black overcoat cover my chest, and the feeling of my butler surrounded me, invading every one of my senses._

"_If God offered to save you, Ciel, would you let him?"_

_With a small smile, I tightened my fingers around his hand._

"_I would never abandon you...not even for God."_

_I wondered if I'd ever been as sure of anything in my entire life as I was of that conviction, in that moment, in that place that was everywhere and nowhere all at once._

_~-~-~_

The morning after the 'incident', as I had come to call it in my mind, I had woken to the feeling of black wool against my cheek and the sight of a new inhaler and a steaming cup of tea in front of my face. The tea was Lapsang Souchong, a variety that I'd had Sebastian buy from Lau on a few occasions, but one that I had never quite developed a taste for. I drank it in silence and bit back my pride, knowing that my butler had selected this particular tea on purpose—if this was the only way he could find to chastise me, I would bear it with my tail tucked between my legs.

Once I could manage to overlook the tension between Sebastian and me, I found myself being quite bored over the next few days. No matter where we looked, no matter who we talked to, all we ever found were brick walls and dead ends. Somehow, in the middle of a city that never let anyone get away, the kidnapped children seemed to have completely vanished. Even Sebastian was coming up empty handed, and the frustration was beginning to color his usually blank face.

However, on the morning of January twenty-eighth, we left the house armed with fresh determination. After six days of fruitless searching, the Queen's attendants had sent her Watchdog a new letter.

During the night, Clair had been returned to her bed.

Luckily, of the families that had been victimized, I was most familiar with the Gundermoores. I had been to their home many times, and, consequently, Clair's comfort level with me was high enough that I could question her without being too much of an imposition. It didn't hurt that her mother liked me quite a bit as well.

Their estates were located in the far northwest section of London Proper, a good thirty minutes by carriage from where my townhouse was on the eastern border of the city. In the week since we'd left the Phantomhive Estate, the weather had warmed considerably. The streets were still covered in a thick layer of dirty snow, but it had become relatively warm, provided I was standing in the sun. At the very least, I could finally see out of the carriage windows.

On the way to visit Clair, I ended up sitting in the carriage by myself. At some point, Sebastian had decided that having Tanaka drive was unnecessary and had taken up the reins himself. I had a very strong suspicion that he was simply creating an opportunity to be away from me, but of course I had no way to prove it.

If I were honest with myself, I didn't really understand why Sebastian still seemed angry. I had kept something important from him, I knew that, but was it really important enough that the usually stoic demon would allow himself to be affected this deeply? I wanted to talk to him, to pull the answer out of him, but I knew Sebastian better than I knew anyone—if he didn't want to tell me, then he certainly wasn't going to, regardless of anything I might do in an attempt to persuade him.

Soon, the carriage jolted to a stop in front of the Gundermoore mansion, a huge brick structure that was certainly larger than the four occupants and their house servants needed it to be. Not that I could talk, really, with the countryside manor I kept just for myself.

I knew where Clair's bedroom was, and we headed there almost immediately despite Cecilia's offer to have me sit down for tea. When I pushed open the door, I steeled myself for whatever it was I might find inside. The Queen's letter had been very vague about the condition Clair was in upon her return, and there was no telling what might have happened to the eight year old during her absence, or what new scars she might have on her body—or her mind.

"Clair? Can I come in?" At her murmur of assent, I pushed to door open the rest of the way, and walked into the room, followed closely by Sebastian.

"Hello, Ciel. Sebastian. How are you?"

"I think we should be more worried about you. You had your parents very anxious," I said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. She was tucked under the covers, and her long, red hair was spread out over the pillows like a fiery halo around her skull. Her little hands were gripping the edge of the coverlet, as thought she couldn't decide whether she wanted to cast it off or pull it more closely to her chin.

"I know...they thought something bad was happening to me. But it wasn't," She smiled at me and took one of my hands in hers. "I was ok. I was even there with my friends, Marie and Francesca. Do you know them?"

I nodded, because Marie Brownstone and Francesca Belmont were two of the other children who were in the files sitting on my desk back at the townhouse.

"Where is 'there'? Do you know where you were, or who took you there?"

The noise of Sebastian shifting slightly in the room was the only thing that broke the silence as the girl looked pointedly down at her coverlet.

"No...I don't know. They put a blindfold on my eyes, and by the time I got it off they were gone. They didn't talk while they were near me, so I don't know what they sounded like, either. I'm sorry..."

I squeezed her hand gently to reassure her, and her eyes lifted to meet my one-eyed gaze.

"All that matters is that you are back home, unharmed. There were a lot of things that could have happened to you, Clair. We were worried."

"I'm ok, Ciel. Really. But I am sort of tired...I didn't sleep very well while I was gone."

I nodded, getting up from the bed. We would leave her to get the rest that she deserved—we had gotten all the information from her that we would be able to get. As I waved goodbye and shut the bedroom door, my brain was working at a speed that it reserved only for the Queen's cases. It didn't make any sense for someone to return a kidnapped child without getting _something _from it. To take something forcibly and then return it without benefiting somehow...wasn't normal.

And in my vast experience, abnormal criminals usually meant headaches for the Lord Phantomhive.

"What does this mean?" I asked, running a nervous hand through my hair.

"It means, Young Master, that the person who took young Miss Gundermoore has profited from this in some way we are unaware of."

Sebastian turned to me, an unasked question in his eyes: _'What do you command, My Lord?'_

I reached behind me, untying the knot on my eye patch with the unaffected grace of someone who'd been doing it for too long.

"Sebastian, I order you to find out who did this. Find out what they wanted, what they got from Clair. You are not to return until you do."

"Yes, My Lord," he replied, and a moment later he was gone, and the only thing that lingered in the hallway was the smell of the finest black wool.

I had to know. The collar was tightening around my neck, and I prayed that this wasn't the time when I finally suffocated from it.

~-~-~

_a/n: I don't think they had inhalers back then, but I couldn't find any information on the subject. So, this is what I based Ciel's off of: _

_www(dot)sciencemuseum(dot)org(dot)uk(slash)images(slash)I054(slash)10322298(dot)aspx_

_It's an early inhaler for anesthesia._


	4. Elizabeth

Chapter 4: **E**lizabeth.

_And in your soul  
They poked a million holes  
But you never let them show..._

~-~-~

Sebastian didn't return until very late that night. For the first time in a long time, my butler did not bring me afternoon tea, and for dinner I ate pot roast and potatoes made by Tanaka, which was passably enjoyable but nowhere near on par with Sebastian's cooking. I had eaten early, because the stress of the day as well as the stress of my lingering cough had effectively exhausted me, and I had planned to retire early as well.

Instead, I ended up sitting at my desk, again looking over the files the Queen had sent me, searching for whatever I might have missed the first hundred times I had flipped through them. I wasn't worried about Sebastian—after all these years, he could certainly take care of himself. The spike of unease rolling through my stomach had nothing to do with him. For the most part, anyway. At the forefront of my mind was the image of two of the other missing children, Marie and Francesca, both around Clair's age though Marie was about a year and a half older. If Clair had been released, then what did that mean for the other children? Would they be released soon, as well, or would they be subjected to the horrible things that Clair had somehow avoided?

It wasn't something I enjoyed thinking about, but I couldn't avoid doing so. And, without Sebastian there to distract me, that knowledge was pressed tightly into my skull by the silence.

Sometime around nine o'clock, something as inevitable as it was distasteful happened—Elizabeth came.

Now, Elizabeth lived just outside of London, in a large manor house with her mother and father, my aunt Francis and uncle Stewart. I had only rarely visited the sprawling estate myself. Truly, I could count the number of my visits on one hand, despite having an open invitation to visit whenever I felt inclined. Whenever I looked at Elizabeth standing next to her parents, I could feel the love they had for her, the same love that, presumably, my parents had felt toward me when they were alive, and it made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn't define. I avoided it as often as possible.

Unfortunately, rarely visiting Elizabeth meant that whenever I came to the city, she paid a visit to me, instead.

"My Lord, you have a visitor," Tanaka said, knocking lightly on my study door before pushing it open and stepping inside. I never liked receiving visitors in London, since they usually meant more work for me, and I was particularly nervous because I didn't have Sebastian there to watch my back. I had proven that I was capable of defending myself on numerous occasions, but a mortal sixteen year old would never be able to take the place of an immortal demon.

"Who is it, Tanaka?" I asked, looking up from the files.

"Lady Elizabeth, My Lord," he said with a bow.

"Bring her to the receiving room. I should be down in a few minutes."

"Yes, My Lord."

As he left the room, I straightened my overcoat, thinking about Elizabeth for what seemed like the first time in a very long while.

The years had been kind to her. The pushy child had changed in front of my eyes into a rather stunning young woman, with the grace and elegance the society of London would have her cultivate. Her blond hair fell in long curls down her back, and her eyes had darkened to a forest green over the last couple of years. She was taller than me now, to my deepest embarrassment, by a good two inches, and she had mellowed out enough that physical contact with her was no longer as painful as it had once been.

Which brought up a question that I had asked myself so many times, yet still had no acceptable answer. Elizabeth was no longer the obnoxious child she had been, so long ago, when I had first learned that she would one day be my wife. She had matured into someone who I almost enjoyed spending time with. So, knowing that, why did the thought of our eventual espousal always make me feel slightly ill? Would marrying Elizabeth really be so bad? On my way to the receiving room, I had to wonder.

"Ciel! How are you?" She asked, when she finally laid her eyes on me, hurrying over to wrap her arms around me in a tight embrace. "It seems like such a long time since I last saw you. You should have told me you were going to be in the city." She lifted her hand to my face, brushing away the black bangs over my eyes. I'd grown used to her desire to touch me, and a few years back I had finally realized that she only did it because of what had happened to me six years ago. For her, feeling my warm skin under her fingers let her know that I was still alive.

"This trip was strictly business—Sebastian and I had planned on being here and gone again in a few days at most. It left no time for social calls," I responded, discreetly pulling away from her.

"Where is Sebastian? I haven't seen him yet."

"Sebastian is on an errand right now," I said, directing her to sit on one of the plush armchairs meticulously placed throughout the room. "He should be home soon, but I cannot promise it."

"Oh..." It was no secret that she liked my butler—liked him almost as much as he unnerved her. This seemed to be the opinion of most women in regards to Sebastian. His handsomeness wasn't something one could dispute, but neither was the dangerous aura that lingered behind his eyes. No matter how human he may have looked, at his core he was still a demon. Everyone could see that there was something inside of him that normal people didn't have, even if they were ignorant of what exactly it was. The only woman who had looked Sebastian in the face without the slightest tinge of fear had been Madame Red, my mother's sister, and she had been immune to him only because of the demons in her own soul.

"You usually visit earlier than this, Lizzie. Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing in particular. I simply had an unexpectedly busy day today; I had planned on coming earlier. Did I interrupt something?"

Tanaka chose that moment to wheel a tea cart into the room, and my eyes flashed in disappointment to see the old man at the head of the cart instead of Sebastian. No matter how much I told myself I wasn't worried for him, I knew that I would have no sleep until he returned.

"No. I am here on a case for the Queen, and it is proving difficult to solve. I was in my office going over the files again. In truth, I probably needed your distraction."

Her face lit up in a smile, and I was once again struck by the fact that she really was quite pretty.

"That's good to hear."

For the next couple of hours, we sat in my receiving room and talked, mostly about the little nothings that made up the life of a woman in her position. Sometimes, on nights like this, I felt sorry for her. From the moment of her birth, she had been raised like a pet, something to coddle and pamper but never treat as an equal. She had been raised in a world where ballroom dancing and fancy dresses were supposed to be the most important thing on her mind, and she had stepped up to the challenge. My cousin, though she was good at very little else, excelled at being a London socialite.

Only rarely did we speak about my work for the Queen, and when we did it was in very superficial terms. Elizabeth knew that I had done—and would continue to do—many things which I was not proud of in the name of Her Majesty, and she had no desire to force their descriptions out of me. She wanted to know about the places I had been to, not what I had done there, and I was happy to tell her that much.

Although I had come to enjoy her company as a friend, and had come to accept the fact that we would one day be married, there was one subject which I still religiously avoided when talking to her: Sebastian. Other than polite inquiries about his whereabouts, I would never have pushed the conversation towards talk about my butler. Because, quite frankly, I was deathly afraid that Elizabeth would eventually discover the truth between Sebastian and me. I had never let her see under my eye patch, and Sebastian had been ordered never to remove his gloves in front of her, no matter what the circumstance. A long time ago, I had made it clear to her that Sebastian was a rather taboo topic.

Of course, being Elizabeth, she chose to ignore me.

"Actually, Ciel, since Sebastian isn't here, I have something to ask you. Something that I have been rather curious about for awhile now..."

I took a sip of my tea to cover my nervousness.

"What is it?"

"Well..." she began, "Sebastian joined you after your parents left us, right? I was thinking the other day, and I started thinking about something really quite odd...that is to say...how old is your butler, Ciel?"

Unlike me, Elizabeth had never been taught how to control herself in stressful situations, and her discomfort with the topic was obvious in the way her voice wavered. That she would ask anyway sent off warning bells in my mind, but there was no way for me to avoid the question without making her even more curious.

"Sebastian has never told me how old he is, Lizzie," I replied.

"Oh...well, it just looks like he hasn't aged a bit since the first time I saw him, and that was six years ago..."

Unwittingly, my fiancée had stumbled on to the very reason why she had to go on a day long carriage trip whenever she wanted to visit me. I had kept the house in the countryside because I knew that Sebastian still looked like he was in his mid-twenties, and he would continue to look that way until I was a crippled and bitter old man. Provided, of course, I lived that long.

"He has aged well," I said. She was getting so close to a truth that I didn't want her to ever understand, and it frightened me. The cup clinked harshly against the china saucer as I set it down.

"Aren't you curious at all? Doesn't it seem odd to you?"

More than anything, I wanted her to drop the subject. I wanted her to look into my eye and see how uneasy it was making me. But, Elizabeth had never been particularly good at reading people, especially me, and now was no exception.

"No."

"Are you alright, Ciel? You look pale..." She stood, coming over and placing the back of her hand against my forehead. The only thing I could smell was her perfume, the only thing I could see was the silken fabric of her green dress. I felt trapped, suffocated by her closeness.

Only one person was allowed to be near me like that.

"Sit down, Elizabeth. Worrying will give you wrinkles."

She stepped away from me quickly, alarmed by the abruptness in my tone. So quickly, in fact, that she didn't have time to remember the tea cart sitting innocently next to my chair, and as she moved backwards her foot caught on the edge of it, and she began to topple over.

The whole thing would have been rather comical, if it weren't for the already tense mood in the room and the fact that the tea cart had been freshly stocked with very hot tea only a few moments ago by a diligent Tanaka.

Looking back, I suppose it would have been better if I had just let Elizabeth get burned—if I had simply let her fall into the cart, let the pot of steaming Chamomile fall onto her voluminous skirts, and hoped for the best. But I had been raised to take care of her. She'd been my fiancée since we were five years old, and she was the only real friend I had that wasn't directly in my employ.

So, instead of letting her crash into the tea cart, I grabbed her thin arm in my fingers and pulled her toward me, catapulting her into my chair even as I catapulted myself out of it, onto the floor, directly under the falling teapot that had gotten jostled off the cart in the confusion.

Feeling the burning liquid seep into my shirt was an experience that I never want to repeat. Within a split second, the tea had wetted my overcoat, my shirt, and my undershirt completely, and my skin was screaming in agony.

"Oh my God, Ciel! Are you alright?" My eyes were shut tight against the pain, so I didn't see her hurry off the chair and crouch down beside me, but I did feel her hands on my shirt, fumbling with the buttons that kept it closed. It took me a moment to remember exactly why it was that Elizabeth had never been allowed to see me without a shirt on, and the desire to lift the burning fabric away from my skin warred with the necessity of Elizabeth _never_ finding out. I wavered just long enough that, by the time I decided to stop her, it was too late.

In the process of sliding the fabric off me, she rolled me onto my side. The tense silence was broken only by the thud of the teapot as it fell to the floor and the sound of my wet clothing hitting the ground.

I didn't give her a chance to ask me about it. I didn't care what thoughts were going through her mind as she looked at the hideous blistered skin of the branded mark. The pain of the hot tea, which had been overwhelming only seconds ago, was pushed away and replaced by the pain of my pride being torn apart and cast to the wind.

"Ciel..."

"Get out."

She reached a hand toward me, only getting halfway before she seemed to change her mind, bringing it back to her chest.

"What did I just see, Ciel?"

"I told you to get the hell out!" I yelled, my eyes wide and wild, barely registering her shocked expression and the way her hands had begun to shake.

"No!" She wasn't yelling—Elizabeth had been taught never to yell—but she was coming dangerously close. "You never share anything with me! I'm your fiancée, Ciel! If you would let me, I would help you..."

Through the haze of my panic, part of me wanted to accept her offer. Part of me wanted to fold myself in her arms and let her perfume roll over me in pleasant waves, to ask her to take away the pain that had been building inside my chest over the past six years, ever since the moment I'd felt that red-hot metal sink into my skin. But even as I thought it, I knew that I would only be fooling myself with fake happiness.

"I do not _want you_, Lizzie."

With those six words, I could see the toppling of everything that we had ever built between us. I could see it in the shuttering of her eyes, and the way her throat moved above her collar as she swallowed thickly. It was obvious in the way she suddenly lost her sixteen years of etiquette training by allowing her shoulders to slump forward. In the way tears began to drip down her face, staining her porcelain skin a splotchy, patched red.

"I know that. I _know that. _But, I thought...maybe it was different now."

"God damn it, Lizzie, no matter how close you stand to me, there will always be a thousand things that you will not know! You will never get to hold every part of me!"

She brought her hand up to roughly wipe at her eyes, dashing away her tears with a ruthlessness that she would never have been able to muster the first time I met her. As she turned away from me, her skirts flared out around her in the gaudy imitation of a ballroom dance. It reminded me of that young girl with blond pigtails that I'd danced with in the foyer so many years ago, aching from the despair of losing my father's ring.

"All I ever wanted was to love you, Ciel. But, sometimes, I think I might hate you more than anyone else I've ever met. I hate that you make me feel like this!"

"...I'm sorry."

She whirled toward me again, and her eyes were filled with as much anger as they were tears. The emotion on her face made me feel like the worst scum in the world.

"Don't apologize," she snarled. "Don't you dare apologize for telling me the truth."

When she walked out of the room, I wondered why I didn't feel more empty.

~-~-~

By the time Sebastian finally returned, I had been allowed to sit and brood over the incident for more than three hours. According to the grandfather clock in my study, it was two-thirty in the morning, and the physical rigors from the day had banded together with the emotional exhaustion. My body was more ready for sleep than it had ever been, but my mind was such a whirlwind of activity that rest seemed an impossible goal.

Even though I had heard his footsteps on the floor outside my study door, it still surprised me when it was silently pushed open. My eyes lifted from the desk to meet my butler's red gaze, but his face was unreadable. For once, I couldn't say the same for my own.

"I thought perhaps you had fallen asleep at your desk again, Young Master," he said by way of explanation, crossing to the middle of the room and dipping down into a heavy bow. "Tanaka told me that you had a confrontation with the Lady Elizabeth. Is everything alright?"

"Why weren't you here?" My hands curled themselves into fists beneath the desk, hidden from view.

"I was following your orders, My Lord."

"Damn it, Sebastian, is that all you can do? Follow my orders? Elizabeth was _crying_, for Christ's sake! What was I supposed to do? God, she said she hated me and I don't think I even cared."

"Lady Elizabeth has always been overly prone to emotion. She will come around."

"You cannot know that!" I growled out, raising a hand to run my fingers through my hair, accidentally dislodging my black eye patch in the process. After a few moments and as many deep breaths, I looked at him, taking in his disheveled appearance for the first time. "She saw my brand, Sebastian. You were supposed to be the only one allowed to see it, but she tripped over the tea cart and saw it. I never wanted her to see it!"

Slowly, he walked the last few feet to my desk.

"Surely you knew that she would see it one day. After all, you are to be married. She will inevitably see you without your clothing at some point. The mark was not a secret that you could have kept from her indefinitely." He stopped for a moment, threading his fingers through the strings of the patch that had fallen down onto the desk's polished top. "Neither is what lies behind this."

With tentative fingers, I brushed gently over my right eye, suddenly realizing the truth of what he was saying. _I never thought I would live long enough for her to find out..._

"...Sebastian?"

"Yes, My Lord?"

"If I..." I swallowed tightly. "If I gave you an order that you did not want to follow, what would you do?"

I still don't know what made me ask that question, though I've spent a long time wondering about it, since then. As best as I can figure, it was a reflection of everything that I had been feeling since Sebastian's hands had plucked me out of my bathtub, weak and shivering, a week before. In the back of my mind, where I could safely compare the impact of Sebastian's disappointment and Elizabeth's anger, I knew that their weights were unequal.

"I would follow it regardless," he answered, and the mocking note that was often hidden in his voice had disappeared.

But, even before he spoke, I knew that I would be disappointed with whatever answer he would give me.

Sebastian had been my butler for six years. During those six years, he had taken better care of me than anyone could have asked for, and I had never once regretted his accidental summoning. He had been unbearably cold, on occasion, so much so that I wondered if he had any esteem for me in his heart, at all. He had also carried me in his arms, comforted me when I was ill, made sure I had everything I would need to remain comfortable no matter what the situation. And when asked why, he only replied that it was his duty as a Phantomhive Butler.

It was moments like these, when all of his fake emotion had been temporarily cast aside and I could see all the way into the cold pits of his eyes, that I almost thought I could recognize a spark of affection there—something that told me he would be doing this whether he were a Phantomhive Butler or not. My body might have looked young, younger than it should, but my mind had been forced to expand and mature much more quickly than normal. I had fully adult thoughts, but the deceptive looks of someone who could never understand adult matters. I wondered if Sebastian could see through that. I wondered if he saw past the five feet and seven inches of my body, past my wide eyes, to the person underneath who had never seen him as a simple butler, not even while drinking a cup of tea every morning and being tucked away under the covers every night.

Sebastian was more than my butler and my friend. He was the man whose disappointment stung me more than the thought of possibly never seeing my fiancée again, and the man who infiltrated my dreams with phantom memories of silken hair and soft black wool.

Yet, to him, I was only his young master.

Reaching forward, I tangled my fingers in the patch's cord, next to his.

"Kiss me?" I asked him.

He looked toward me—I could feel his gaze, heavy and full of emotions that I would never be able to read—and let the fabric drop back down onto the desk. His fingers instead went to the lock of hair that fell forward to cover my eye, and he swept it back.

"No, My Lord. You would only regret it tomorrow, when the blood no longer sings so hotly in your veins."

For a moment, the only thing that mattered was the feeling of my hair sliding through his gloved fingers.

"Leave me, then," I replied. I might have imagined the momentary hesitation in his voice before he answered, but I wasn't capable of thinking clearly at that moment. Everything that had happened over the last week was stockpiling behind my eyes, pushing, aching to get out, and it took everything in me to make sure it didn't escape.

"Yes, My Lord."

And then my butler was gone, not having told me his discoveries. Not having explained to me why it was alright for Elizabeth to hate me now. Not having readied me for bed, just like he hadn't readied my tea that afternoon.

~-~-~


	5. Always Moving Never Going Back

Chapter 5: **A**lways.**M**oving.**N**ever.**G**oing.**B**ack.

_For all of the loved ones gone  
Forever's not so long..._

_~-~-~_

When I was fourteen years old, I hit Sebastian for the first and last time.

~-~-~

In the middle of June, 1890, Sebastian and I got called to a city in the middle of France called Limoges, a good five day trip from my house in the countryside. If I were a normal teenager, I would gladly have spent my time there marveling at the stunning architecture and purchasing samples of Limoges' world-famous porcelain, but I was there strictly on business for the Queen. It was rare for Her Majesty to send me out of the country—as the Queen of England, her interest was generally contained to matters within Britain—and if I had been more prone to arguing, I probably would have declined the assignment. June at the Phantomhive Estates was enjoyable, but June in Limoges was absolutely sweltering.

Regardless, when the French Prime Minister appealed to Queen Victoria for help in apprehending a particularly evasive serial killer, we were the natural choice. All arrogance aside, I took my work for the Queen very seriously, and she was very aware of that fact. Whatever our methods were, we would get the job done, and when foreign relations were on the line she needed someone with that conviction. If it seems odd that the government of France would ask a fourteen year old British Earl and his butler to do a job that would have been better left in the hands of the French National Police, I believe that it was a matter of national comfort. When we finally arrived in Limoges, it was after the serial killer had been roaming the streets for over three months, and the list of victims encompassed more than thirty five bodies. By bringing in an outsider, they were bringing in someone more level-headed, someone who wouldn't let passion for the case get in the way of cold logic.

The killer always drowned his prey—sometimes in the Vienne River itself, sometimes in the smaller confines of a private bathtub or washing basin—and by the time the victims were found they were usually bloated, with grotesquely colored purple skin that sagged from their faces like rumpled bedsheets. Of the six years of cases that the Queen has sent me on, this one was by far the most emotionally scarring, though at the time I naively believed that no one but Sebastian knew.

To this day, I haven't figured out if Her Majesty believed in Sebastian's mask, if she believed that my attendant was a simple butler, and nothing more, or if she could see right through him. Right to the bloody circle hidden underneath his pristine white gloves. Either way, she had sent us on that mission because she thought we could handle the brutality of it.

And we did.

On the twenty-second of June, five days after our arrival in Limoges, I had been staring at Sebastian's violent red eyes across a lacquered chess board that my father had given me. He was winning—he always ended up winning, even though we must have played hundreds of times over the years—and he had that same smile on his face that seemed to mock me every time. He took my queen just as the clock in the foyer downstairs chimed the for the tenth time, echoing the hour throughout the inn. We had Sebastian's assurances that the killer would strike at midnight, though I didn't question how he knew. The summer heat was pressing thickly on my skull, and it was late enough that I usually would have been preparing for bed, but I wasn't going to miss this chance. Catching monsters like the Limoges Serial Killer was the one way I could find to exorcise the monsters buried deeply inside of me.

I'll never know whether I feel asleep due to simple exhaustion, or if Sebastian had a hand in it as well, but somehow over the course of the next two hours, my eyelids slipped closed. My sleep was so deep that I did not stir when the clock struck eleven, nor midnight, nor any of the other early-morning hours. My eyes only fluttered open when the first rays of the morning sun shone through the drapes, bathing my face in the harsh light. I instinctively looked across from me, expecting to see the black form of my butler as he smiled at me, gently chiding me for having fallen asleep. But, he wasn't there.

When he finally did return, it was only after I had haphazardly dressed myself and suffered through the breakfast provided by the inn. He had a hole in his coat, and blood on his face, as he coldly informed me that the threat had been taken care of.

I was angry about a lot of things that morning. Angry about not having the chance to take care of it myself, about having my servant do my job for me. Angry at having woken up without Sebastian there, angry because it had taken me a half hour to do my shirt buttons up properly. Angry because the blood on his face reminded me of everything about him that I had tried to so hard to forget.

And, when my hand made contact with his cheek, I was angry that I had to stand on my toes to reach him, and angry because of the guilt I felt when I saw the imprint of my signet ring on his skin.

"You will never do that to me again, Sebastian," I'd said, and gone to get a wet cloth to sooth the mark.

~-~-~

"We will return to the manor now, Young Master."

I blinked tiredly, forcing my eyelids to stay open despite how very much they wanted to fall shut again. No sunlight streamed through the gaps in the drapes yet, and my brain groaned in protest at being woken so early.

"Come again?"

Sebastian straightened from where he had been tending to the fire, and walked over to my bed. As he did, I couldn't help but notice that the cart which usually held my morning tea and an array of various breakfast pastries was missing.

"It is very important that we return to the Phantomhive Estates with every haste possible."

Underneath the covers, I shivered.

"What exactly does that mean, Sebastian?" I asked, rubbing a hand over my eyes in agitation. My brain wasn't working quickly enough to be able to keep up with his strange behavior, and I had a sneaking suspicion that a headache would be pounding across my forehead by the time this day was finally over.

Instead of giving me a verbal answer, Sebastian handed me an envelope with the insignia of the royal house splashed across the front.With a questioning glance at my butler, I pulled the letter out, not bothered by the fact that it had obviously already been opened. After six years of it, I was quite used to Sebastian reading my mail.

_Dear Earl Phantomhive,_

_ We have received very good news regarding the case of the five missing noble children. It seems that, late yesterday evening, Marie Brownstone, Francesca Belmont, William Grenwich, and Patrice Revfton were returned to their homes, all in the same conditions they were at the time of the initial kidnappings. Her Majesty appreciates your voracity in attempting to catch the perpetrator, but feels that your services will no longer be necessary due to the fact that the children were returned safely. The Royal House again thanks you for your continued loyalty to the Crown._

_Most sincerely,_

_Baron Franklin Stuart_

_On behalf of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria_

For a moment, I could do nothing but stare at the words on the page as they blurred in my vision. Never before had Sebastian and I been so callously called off a case in this way. As much as the conviction that I was the Queen's Watchdog bothered me, the main reason it did so was because of its unerring accuracy. For Her Majesty, I was very much like a dog.

And deterring a hunting dog from the scent of a rabbit before that rabbit was clutched between its jaws was an almost impossible task.

However, once I started to collect my thoughts from where the letter had scattered them, I began to think about what Sebastian had probably been thinking about from the moment he had opened the envelope: no matter how I looked at this, it didn't make any sense. Why would someone kidnap children—noble children, no less, who would have been very difficult to get to and equally difficult to put back—without taking anything from them? Without _doing_ anything to them? I was well aware of what horrible things could happen to a child if a sick enough person got to them.

What was the motivation?

"Now do you understand why we must return to the manor, Young Master?" He asked, pulling the black circle of fabric over my right eye. He must have seen in the blankness of my gaze that I didn't understand at all.

"Allow me to put it this way—what are the only two reasons a thief would have to give back what he has taken?" He continued.

"Stop stalling, Sebastian, and just tell me already. If we haven't even the time for me to eat breakfast, we surely haven't the time for your riddles," I countered.

The truth of the matter is that I thoroughly dislike putting myself in the mindset of a criminal. Deep down, I knew that it would take very little for me to turn away from the safe and happy side of things. My soul had been tainted a very long time ago, and I knew better than anyone how very tempting it was to turn from the brightly lit road to the darkened alley, where one could no longer see their faults so clearly.

I felt his finger on my chin, tilting my head upward so that the gaze from his stunning red eyes pinned my own.

"Either they are stupid enough to get caught, or cunning enough to get what they wanted. Tell me, Young Master, if you were the Queen, and the children of your close friends and advisors had been kidnapped, with no ransom note and no leads on the criminal, who would be the first person you call?" My eyes widened, but he continued on. "Yes. You call your loyal servant, Lord Phantomhive. And Lord Phantomhive would come to help you as quickly as he could, because letting down his precious Queen is not something he has ever been willing to do. And he would leave his home unprotected, because his devoted butler would never leave his side."

Even as the thoughts formed in my mind, I tried to push them away. There was nothing, _nothing_, that was more of a blow to the pride than falling headfirst into a trap. What Sebastian was suggesting left such a vile taste in my mouth that I don't think I've ever tasted anything quite so unpalatable.

"Why...why would we return to the manor? If it were a trap, surely they have yet to close it on us?"

"The trap was not for us, Young Master. The trap was for those we left behind."

At his words, I felt my heart sink slowly down into the pit of my stomach, leaving me feeling as thought I might be sick any moment. Maylene, Bard, and Finnie could take care of themselves. I knew that. And yet...and yet...the nausea didn't go away. If the person who had taken Clair and the other children had thought this through well enough to come up with a foolproof plan of luring me away from the mansion, there was no telling what other precautions he might have put in place. No matter what he wanted with my ancestral home, my servants were under orders to protect it with their lives, and they would follow those orders until the very last.

"What did you find out last night? Did you uncover who took the children?"

"Yes, I did," he replied.

I waited for a moment, looking expectantly toward him, before it became clear that he had no intentions of answering the first half my question.

"Well? Who was it, Sebastian?"

"It is in your best interest not to know, My Lord."

I must admit, in my youth I was often burned by my hubris. It is difficult, to say the least, for a ten year old to suddenly become his own master. When faced with that much freedom, a proclivity towards arrogance isn't unusual. I believed that because I had collared a demon and become the Queen's personal investigator, I could cast aside my childhood like some unfashionable cloak. Unfortunately, no matter how easy it was to forget, I _was _still a child. In that immaturity, it was impossible to look past myself and realize that other people had suffered as I had suffered. I was not the only person in this world who knew the true meaning of anguish. Even then, when I was sixteen years old and had long since realized that my opinion was rarely the only one with merit, I allowed my pride to rule me more than I should have.

When Sebastian refused to answer me for the second time, I overlooked the fact that there was likely a reason _why_ he refused. I overlooked the way his eyes seemed to beg me—as far as Sebastian would ever lower himself to beg for anything—not to pursue the subject further. The only thing I saw was his refusal, and it made me absolutely furious.

"I did not give you that option. Tell me."

At his continued silence, I reached behind me to untie the eye patch he had so recently affixed over my eye. I didn't like using the contract to force my butler—both because it always made me feel quite guilty and because it left my eye throbbing painfully, as though someone had pressed on it with the palm of their hand much more harshly than they should—but when my emotions got the better of me, I always seemed to end up with my eye patch in my hand and words flying from my mouth.

I tugged on the end of the cord, expecting the fabric to fall away as easily as it always did. But, after a few harsh yanks, I understood that Sebastian had done something very, _very_ bad.

He had knotted the cord.

Not only had he knotted the cord, but he had knotted it in a way that a good bit of my black hair had been trapped within the knot, making a painless removal impossible. Sebastian had been tying that damned black piece of fabric over my right eye for six years, and the only time it had ended up in a knot had been when I'd done it myself. Sebastian would never have accidentally made that mistake.

"Sebastian..." I growled out his name, and even through the anger must have been written all over my face, he did not back down. I don't think Sebastian ever forgot that he was the immortal demon and I was only the sixteen year old boy who masqueraded as his master, not even in a moment when I felt like my anger could allow me to do anything. Again, he did not answer.

With a great tug, I ripped the patch off, ignoring the twenty or so strands of black hair that clung to it as it fell to the floor, and ignoring the pain that accompanied them. My hands had curled into fists somehow, and the bite of the nails into my palm only served to make me more angry.

"This is an order, Sebastian! Tell me who took those children!"

His red eyes glowed violet for a moment, and he moved away to pull the drapes closed more tightly, presumably testing how many seconds it took before he was forced to obey me. The throb of a headache began behind my right eye, quickly blooming outward.

"The people who killed your parents and ruined your young life, My Lord. They are the ones responsible."

I don't know what I had expected him to say. Maybe that someone holding a grudge from one of my previous cases had finally decided to get their revenge, or maybe something else. I could remember very little about those who had burned down my mansion and violently slaughtered my parents. When I thought of the ones who had marked me with the brand on my back, the only things I remembered were their leering faces.

I think the blood must have completely drained from my face, even with just that small bit of memory.

"Go to the manor. Protect my home!" I shouted the order at him, ripping the covers off of my trembling legs, completely forgetting the lethargy that had dulled my brain only moments before.

"Young Master, that would leave you alo--"

"I said _go_, Sebastian! Now!"

"...Yes, My Lord."

As I watched him leave, my thoughts raced through my mind. We were no longer dealing with a normal criminal. This was no longer a simple case of a few missing children. The people who had ruined my life those six years ago were on a completely different level of insanity. And it frightened me. We had selected Maylene, Finnie, and Bard because they were the best available, but they were still mortal. No matter how steadfast, they would never be demons like Sebastian. Their mortality was a ball and chain which they would never be able to cast off, as my own was for myself.

A sudden image of my childhood home burning to the ground flashed before my eyes.

Ignoring my shaking limbs, I stood from the bed and reaffixed the eye patch over my violet iris. It would be a long road back home, but Tanaka and I would catch up with Sebastian as quickly as we could.

~-~-~

On the way back to my estate, I had no desire to look out the window. Over the next eight hours, I kept my gaze steadily locked on the hands folded neatly across my lap. I was afraid that if I looked out the window I would see a countryside bathed in flame rather than one covered in snow.

When we passed by the old abandoned farmhouse that stood just outside of my property line, I began to pull myself back together. Panic would not help the situation, no matter what ended up being at the end of the road. Even so, I felt my heart flutter like some frantic bird caged inside my chest, and the closer we came to the manor, the more desperately it beat. Inside my head, images of Maylene lying lifeless on the front steps and Bard bleeding to death in the kitchen ran rampant, and I could do nothing to stop them.

I saw the smoke before I saw the fire.

The Phantomhive Estate was almost gone. From the looks of it, it had been burning most of the day, and the only thing left was the empty brick husk and little bits of fabric curtains where they fluttered from the gaping windows. The glass had all broken from the heat, leaving sharp, jagged teeth that made my home look more like a beast than the place where I had spent most of my life. It was strangely beautiful, really, with the sun setting behind it and the lingering flames lighting a violent halo around the blackened bricks. The snow had long since melted.

Without even realizing it, shocked tears had begun to leak from my eyes, running in thick rivulets down my cheeks.

Even now, thinking back, I can only remember three times in my life when I truly thought I was going to die. The first was, of course, when I was ten years old. The moment when the brand touched my skin and sent me reeling with such pain as I had never felt before in my young life.

The second was at that moment when I stepped out of the carriage and saw Simon waiting for me.

His brown eyes locked with mine, and all of the sensations I had felt upon our first meeting returned to plague me tenfold. He looked both dangerous and menacing, both devastatingly handsome and disheveled. His mouth was shaped into a leering half-moon of a smile, and it sent hearty ripples of unease down the entire length of my spine and back. His overcoat was gone, leaving his chest bare and white. On the pale skin above his heart, I saw a familiar-looking blood-red symbol.

"Ah, the little Phantomhive. I wondered how long it would take for you to come chasing after your rogue butler."

In his hands, he twirled a familiar straw gardening hat.

~-~-~


	6. Someday You Might Forgive Me

Chapter 6: **S**omeday.**Y**ou.**M**ight.**F**orgive.**M**e.

A/N: This chapter gets a little...unsavory, so it's probably not for the kiddies.

_No longer shall you need  
You always wanted to believe..._

~-~-~

I am a firm believer that the actions we have taken are what make us who we are. Because of this, and because I am not ashamed of who I have become, I can't say that I regret my past. However, I know that there were times when I could have acted differently, been more understanding. In hindsight, I have realized that the Ciel Phantomhive of the past was not a pleasant person, and in some respects that hasn't changed. I am still harsh, and have little patience for idiocy, but I like to believe that I have changed in the ways that matter most. You see, I thought about a lot of things in the hours I was held captive.

Often I wonder whether it wasn't, perhaps, a good thing that I was taken. When you think you're about to die, things go through your mind that you never would have realized without that desperate stimulus.

I thought about Finnie. About how thin he'd been when Sebastian and I had picked him up off the streets of London after he'd escaped from the research lab which he'd been held in. About how he never really looked entirely healthy again. I'd given him that straw hat as a birthday present on August fifth, the day which he picked as his birthday because he'd long since forgotten the real one. He had looked so happy, happier than anyone had any right to look over a stupid straw hat, and Sebastian had baked him a lemon cake even though lemons were ridiculously difficult to come by, especially in the middle of the English countryside. Finnie was too nice, really, and very easy to take advantage of. Despite his past, he had retained his innocence somehow, and had kept it until the day he died. I've never met anyone else quite like him, and even if I did I don't think I'd be able to handle them very well. I tolerated him well enough, but I wouldn't make that sacrifice for anyone else.

I thought about Maylene, as well. Her background was much less well-known to me, because Sebastian had selected her without my confirmation. Sometimes when I looked at her, I wondered why she still lived in my house despite being the very type of woman I despised. She was clumsy and absentminded, never focusing on one thing for more than a few minutes before she became distracted by something else. Then, I would see the dedication, the loyalty, she had towards protecting me, and I would remember why. I wish I had taken the chance to sit down with her at least once and listened to what she might have had to say. It was my arrogance at work again, the idea that she was simply my servant and nothing more. In my youth, I believed that simply by being born who I was, somehow I was a better human being than most. Over the years, I've refined that opinion, changing it to understand that it wasn't whom you were born to, but what you did with your life that marked your importance. In that way, Maylene might have even been more important than me, though I'll never know for sure.

To be honest, I didn't think about Bard very much. Of my three servants who disappeared that day, Bard was the one I was least worried about. He had seen death many times before, had looked it in the eye without regret or fear. I think he might have even known about Sebastian, and if that didn't frighten him, I doubt anything would. The most I felt for Bard was guilt over having dragged him into something that he could not face. I know that what happened to him was entirely my fault, and I wish there had been another way.

For the most part I thought about Sebastian, and I thought about myself.

The contract wasn't something I was ever allowed to forget. My right eye throbbed with the knowledge of it, always vaguely uncomfortable in a way that I had long since gotten used to. But even had there been no physical reminders, I would have never allowed myself to forget.

In the beginning, the contract was a source of pride for me—I had managed to cage a demon, even if only until I got my revenge. It only took a few years for the pride I felt to become fear, instead. I feared the day when the contract would be fulfilled and that damned eye of mine would take him away from me. As I sat there, I realized exactly why it was so frightening. A large part of it was my own selfishness, although swallowing my pride enough to admit that is still difficult even now.

But I had fallen into a dangerous trap at some point along the line. Even though I knew Sebastian only did what he did because he was my butler, I had allowed myself to believe instead that he took such good care of me because of some hidden affection. Somehow, I had stopped looking at him as a butler and begun looking at him as an equal. I felt his disappointment like a knife in my side, and when he was pleased with me it left a thick warmth in my chest. Sebastian was the only person allowed to see the shameful brand on my back, the only one who I allowed to carry me despite my prideful protestations. Not only was Sebastian the only one I had ever requested a kiss from, he was the only one I had any desire to kiss in the first place.

Upon this realization, I had allowed myself a moment of self-pity heavily mixed with self-disgust. It was one thing to use your servants for sex—if the rumor mill was to be believed, it happened more often than it didn't—but what I wanted from him was something different. I had allowed myself to believe in his affection for so long that I'd begun to hope it might be real, and that was something I should have been smart enough not to do.

I think that moment must have been when I realized that, even if I wanted Sebastian to love me, I didn't deserve his love. For the past six years, I had treated him like a butler, selfishly, mindlessly, and I didn't deserve for him to be anything more than that. I didn't deserve to have him say my name.

There was no doubt in my mind that he would save me. Simon had knocked me out somehow and I had woken in some dark place to find my hands tied behind my back with thickly knotted ropes. My butler would save me. The only unknown was how long it would take him to do so.

I had no way of knowing that even as Tanaka and I had been pulling up to the Phantomhive manor in the countryside, Sebastian was arriving at the townhouse in London to head us off. Even if I had known, I doubt it would have changed anything. Even at his fastest, Sebastian could only make the trip from the manor to the townhouse in a little under an hour, and by then we would have already been long gone.

To be honest, I couldn't remember very much about the first time I was kidnapped. The combination of it being so traumatic and so long ago made it very easy to cast from my mind. When I finally saw the man who had initiated everything, I could look at him with eyes that understood very well that my butler would get my revenge for me even if I, myself, couldn't.

"Hello, Lord Phantomhive. I trust that you are well?"

His outline was framed by the light from the hallway for a moment before his whole figure was illuminated with the striking of a match to a large hand-lantern. Disappointingly, he was rather plain. His blond hair was cut close to his head, and he was balding badly enough that he probably should have just shaved the rest of it off. He was neither thin nor fat, simply showing the softness that often accompanied middle-age, although I would have only placed him somewhere in his thirties. His face was unremarkable save for the bright sign of a demon contract etched into his left iris. Unlike me, he apparently didn't feel it necessary to cover it up with a patch.

I didn't know how I felt about seeing this man standing in front of me like this. For so long, I had waited for the moment when I could get exact my revenge, and now that it was finally upon me, the anti-climactic nature was a bit of a let down.

"Where are your manners? As your guest, it is only appropriate for me to know your name before you know mine," I said. My heart continued a slow rhythm against my ribs, and I looked at the man with a detachedness that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised me.

"My apologies. My name is Samuel Wright, and I've waited a very long time to finally meet you, Ciel," he replied, coming into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed on which I had awoken.

"Please do not speak to me so familiarly."

"I don't think you are in any position to take that tone with me, Ciel."

It didn't bother me that I was on a bed. Regardless of what would likely happen to me on it, it was still more comfortable than being chained to the floor. It helped that a large part of my brain still heartily believed that Sebastian would be coming any minute now to help me.

He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrawing a thin, black leather photograph file. The worn edges indicated that it had lived in that pocket or some equally stressful place for a very long time. From its folds, he took out a single photograph, yellowed with age.

"Do you recognize him? You should." The content of the photograph was the profile of a man in his twenties. He looked out of the paper with light eyes framed by a pair of black glasses, and from what little I could see of his neck, the clothes he was wearing were likely very expensive. "He was my brother."

He locked eyes with me, and began to move toward me on the bed. I would have moved if my hands weren't tied to the bedpost as well as each other, but as it was, I could only sit there while he advanced on me. His hand reached up, tangling in my hair to pull me forward.

"I loved my brother, you see. His name was David, but he never liked it—thought it was too common, too average. Then, one day, he saw you."

I felt the hand move from my hair to stroke down my face instead. Under his palm, my skin felt cold and clammy, and I suddenly wondered what Sebastian's hand would feel like in the place of my captor's.

"I wonder what it was about you that captivated my brother so much. You look rather plain to me, to be honest. But, David wanted you. He wanted to keep you always by his side. This is proof of that ownership, I think." When he reached toward the spot on my back where the brand innocuously rested, I jerked away. That was the one place I would never let anyone else near if I could help it, particularly not the brother of the one who gave it to me in the first place.

"Then, you somehow summoned a demon who went on to kill my brother. And in a matter of minutes, he not only lost you but he lost his own life."

I watched with a strange detachment as he leaned closer to me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. The eye patch had been left on, most likely because he was unaware of the exact purpose it served and didn't want to take any chances, so I could only see his face through my left eye. When his lips descended against mine, he did not steal my first kiss. If the innocent kisses of childhood were to be ignored and my captor was to be believed, his brother had been the one to take it, six years ago. His tongue pressed for entrance, even though I can't imagine how my lips were particularly enticing.

I did not feel violated. The knowledge that he would more likely than not be dead by the end of the day allowed me to distance myself from what was really happening. After all, it had happened before, and I had survived. I would survive again.

"So I decided that I would break you down, Ciel. I wanted you to understand the pain my brother went through because of his love for you." His mouth moved northwest, resting just next to the shell of my ear. "So I killed your maid. And when she was satisfactorily dead, I killed your cook. As I left that lovely house of yours, I killed your gardener. As we speak, your fiancée is likely gasping her last breath with your name on her lips. Once she is disposed of, my demon will take care of your butler." His tongue darted out to trace the rim of my ear, sending warm sensations down my spine that did nothing to dislodge the cold spear of ice that had wedged itself in my heart. I had seen Finnie's hat, and I knew the likelihood that my servants were no longer of this world was high. But to believe something by your own observation and to be told something which solidifies your fears are two very different things.

And I didn't think I could take it if Elizabeth died under the belief that I was angry with her.

"And once everything you love is ripped away from you, I will give you the chance to beg for your life like my brother begged for his. Then," his teeth closed around the lobe with deceptive gentleness, "I'll kill you too."

~-~-~

Samuel Wright did not rape me. Had Sebastian arrived half an hour later than he did, I have no doubt that the disgusting man would have, but I ended up escaping with my virtue, such as it was, intact. Perhaps he took his time because he believed that he had all the time in the world to take me, or because he enjoyed hanging over my head the knowledge of what was to come. Either way, that extra time was what signed away his future.

When my butler walked through the door, his eyes fell on me, taking in my bare chest, the shirt bunched at my wrists where the restraints kept it, the gaping zipper on my pants. All across my chest were patches of rouged skin and small scratches, and my lips were red and swollen from rough kisses. I'll never know for sure what he felt when he saw me, but I imagine it was similar to the way I felt when I saw him standing in the door, black suit ripped and bloody with one sleeve completely removed and a jagged cut extending along the length of his arm. His normally well-kept hair was messy, his eyes were changed from their normal black to an angry violet.

Samuel Wright was flung against the wall in a matter of seconds, sounding his impact with a sickening crack against the plaster. His eyes closed, covering his contract for the first time since he had come into the room some undefined while before. I felt a sick satisfaction at being proven right, at knowing that although he had gotten away with stealing a few kisses and nipping bites, I had escaped with my life. It was a bitter satisfaction, though—the same satisfaction I felt whenever either Sebastian or I were forced to take a life during a mission for the Queen. Protecting Her Majesty's assets was our job, and since we ourselves were included amongst those assets, it became our job to protect ourselves. Whether that meant allowing myself to be violated or Sebastian sacrificing a little blood to win a fight, as long as both of us came out alive in the end, it was alright.

It was all in the name of the Queen.

"Are you alright, My Lord?"

His hand were steady as they deftly untied the knots that held my hands captive, but it didn't pass by my notice that he took a bit longer than he usually would have to undo them.

"Yes," I replied. He buttoned up my shirt as best as he could despite the fact that a good number of the buttons were missing or hanging loosely enough to be completely useless. Some cynical voice in the back of my mind wanted to tell him that protecting my honor was no longer much of an issue, but I was suddenly overcome with a particularly strong tiredness, so I kept my lips firmly pressed together.

"I apologize for my lateness. I was...detained."

I could not find the energy in my body to reply, instead I stayed silent as he picked me up gently in his arms. I no longer felt any need to protest the action. I now understood that superficial affection was likely all I was going to get, and I should be satisfied with it. He kicked the bedroom door shut behind him as we left, allowing the loud sound to serve as a physical manifestation of his anger.

"Young Master?" he asked, shifting me in his arms so that the smallest weight possible was distributed on his injured arm. "You asked me earlier what name Simon attempted to call me upon our first meeting. Would you still like to know the answer?"

I nodded against his chest, feeling a warm smear of blood spread across my cheek.

"He was going to call me Brother."

For some reason, this was a sudden moment of clarity for me despite the fact that it didn't really explain anything at all. The idea that Sebastian would have had siblings, or family of any kind, had never occurred to me. I had never thought about the dynamics of the demon's life outside of how they related to me—yet another way in which the teenage Ciel Phantomhive demonstrated that he was little more than a selfish child.

"Oh," I replied.

~-~-~

"_Who are you?"_

"_My name is of no consequence. You have summoned me. Is it your intention to form a contract and escape from this hell in which you find yourself?"_

"_How do I know you are telling me the truth? This could be a trick, or an illusion."_

"_I am bound never to lie."_

"_Never?...Never is a very long time."_

"_Surely you understand that you are going to die soon. For you, never is the same as only a moment. Shall I help you get your revenge?"_

"_I don't want to die, not at the hands of these people."_

"_Is it your wish, then, to form a contract?"_

"_Please, help me."_

_All around me, I heard the soft beat and rustle of winged feathers, and I felt a warmth on my palm where before only cold had been present._

"_As you wish, My Lord."_

~-~-~

I must have fallen asleep in his arms, because the next time I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the white ceiling of my bedroom at the townhouse. I spent a few minutes just sitting in bed, going over everything that had happened in the last few days, letting the thoughts swirl around inside my mind freely in hopes that they would form themselves into something resembling order. Somehow, it all seemed like a dream. It seemed impossible that so many important things—life changing things—could happen in so short a time. When I had set out a week ago for London from my mansion in the countryside, it had seemed like any normal mission. Reach London, find the kidnapped children, deliver punishment on those responsible, return home to find a warm fire lit in my bedroom and a delicious cup of tea waiting for me in my study. It seemed easy, and yet so many things had gone wrong.

My house was ruined more completely than it had been any other time in the past six years. My servants were presumably dead, and my fiancée was likely gone as well. I had escaped the worst violation possible by only a handful of minutes. I had both asked my butler to kiss me and been refused.

Perhaps more important, though it didn't sink in until a little while later, was the realization that by killing Samuel Wright, my revenge had finally been realized.

When the lock on my bedroom door clicked open, the relief I felt at seeing Elizabeth's blond head was overwhelming. She entered my room slowly, almost as though she were afraid of attracting my notice, and looked over at the bed. I realized a moment too late that the black patch of fabric which usually covered my right eye was missing, presumably sitting on that damned bed, wherever it was. My hand flew up to cover the violet iris, but the damage had already been done, and Elizabeth reached up and drew my hand away with gentle fingers.

"I won't ask, Ciel. I don't need to know."

Suddenly, I found her arms wrapped around me, holding on to me with all of the strength she had in her thin body. Her face burrowed into the fabric of the nightshirt which Sebastian must have put on me before, and she began to shiver violently. Small distressed sounds came out of her mouth, even as her fingers tightened more against my back.

"I was so frightened, Ciel. I was in my bedroom at home, and I thought I heard a scream from downstairs, then this man came into my room. His eyes were the scariest thing I've ever seen. If Sebastian hadn't come, I don't know what would have happened to me. Even so, I thought he was going to die. He grabbed onto that man and they both fell out the window, and I thought my bedroom was too high for anyone to survive a fall like that. When I looked outside, they were both gone, but there was so much blood in the snow on the ground that I thought surely one of them must be dead." My shirt was beginning to feel damp because of her tears. I now understood that the reason for Sebastian's lateness in saving me was that he had decided to help Elizabeth instead. Even though I was glad for it, I couldn't help wondering why. Perhaps he understood that a little part of my soul would have died if Elizabeth had been killed solely because of me.

For the first time in a long while, I did not feel awkward about Elizabeth's clinging hands. I understood that, just as there were many times in my life when I would have appreciated a little comfort, so it was with my fiancée. She had waited for me for a very long time, and even if I now knew that I would never return her feelings, I still loved her in a way that I loved no one else. She was my best friend, and if she wanted to cry on my chest then I would let her, despite the fact that the only thing I wanted was to push her away and call for Sebastian.

~-~-~


	7. In My Dreams I Never Die

Chapter 7: **I**n.**M**y.**D**reams.**I**.**N**ever.**D**ie

_Come on, it's time to go..._

_~-~-~_

Over the years, one thing I discovered was that lies were the greatest tool of the Evil Nobleman. Lies were, essentially, what made that black, secret world turn. For years, I had lied about my butler, lied about my parents, lied about my home, lied about how I really wished that sometimes I could bring myself to cry. I lied about my eye, about the brand on my back, about the real reason why I never wanted to be alone.

And those lies were all useful in their own rights. They allowed me to continue on as I was, walking that fine line between something which was wrong but excusable and something which could not be forgiven. However, they were not the lies that were the most crucial. The ones which played the most important part were the lies which I told myself—the ones which made the hate I felt for myself lessen just enough to keep on living.

That I continually had my house rebuilt simply for convenience's sake.

That I didn't feel a sliver of dread whenever I saw Her Majesty's seal in my post.

That I wasn't in love with Sebastian.

Those three were the most common, I think, and the most telling.

Once Elizabeth finally left, I seemed to flounder in that space between sleeping and waking for a very long time. Some part of me realized that I was in my bed, in my London townhouse, but a separate, more powerful part of me was intent on letting that reality drift away for the time being. It was another of my defense mechanisms—sleeping until whatever stress was being put on me had been reduced to a manageable level. Even though I had slept a day and a night away, my body was more than willing to succumb to sleep again.

As I slipped into sleep, I told myself over and over again that I wasn't a coward.

~-~-~

_I felt fingers sliding gently through my hair, combing through the knots without causing me any pain. They were familiar fingers, though it had been a long time since I had last felt their warmth. My mother's nails were short and well-manicured, the same way they had always been. As her hand passed over me, her scent filled my nose with an overwhelming feeling of safety._

"_Sleeping again, Ciel? I thought you had work to do."_

_Her voice had never been average. It was deep, and sweet, like honey, and seemed to float over me like a comforting blanket. This was the voice that had sung me to sleep when nightmares would have kept me awake. This was the voice that called out to me, pained, burning, when my mother locked eyes with me that one last time. Now, it spoke to me with a smile._

"_I'm too tired to work."_

"_You know what they say, Honey—'you can sleep when you're dead'."_

_She laughed, a sound that I had gone too long without hearing. In the six years since her death, my mother had not changed at all._

"_That's a bit tasteless, Mother."_

"_I couldn't help myself. I was hoping I'd get to see your smile while you were here."_

_We fell into a brief silence, with only the soft rustle of her fingers carding through may hair breaking the void. I wanted to tell her everything—tell her why I couldn't bring myself to smile much anymore—but I couldn't. The words wouldn't come out._

"_You've grown into a fine young man, Ciel. I am proud of you."_

_I snorted suddenly, an undignified and inappropriate sound._

"_There's nothing about me to be proud of."_

"_Not from what I've heard. I had a lovely chat yesterday with that pretty young maid of yours, Maylene. She seemed like a wonderful person. So did the others."_

"_You...saw them?"_

_She was quiet for a moment, and I realized that no matter how reassuring it was to see my mother again, this conversation was doomed to be full of things that would have been better left unsaid._

"_I'm sorry, Honey. They arrived a few days ago."_

_I should have been sad, and I suppose a small part of me was. As much as I showed frustration towards my servants, I really did like them. I wish there was a better, more appropriate word for what I felt for them, but if there is, I don't know it. Their antics, on many occasions, brought me out of the deepest depressions, when nothing else seemed worth it. Sometimes, just looking at Finnie's smiling face was enough to pull a responding grin from my own mouth._

_So, yes, I was sad that I would never see them again. I would never taste Bard's abysmal cooking, never see Finnie's beautiful roses, never hear Maylene's frustrated yell as another cart of teacups fell to the floor. But more than that, I was happy. Because, if they were here with my mother, it meant that they could live the rest of their existences in peace. I had no name for where this was, nor did I have a name for the feeling of completely overwhelming peace that flowed through my veins, but I was glad that they would be able to feel it too._

_Even though the Queen's Watchdog would never rest in the Elysian Fields, it seemed that his servants would._

"_I'm glad that you had them with you these long years. I must admit, I was worried when your father and I had to leave you. You were still so young." She brushed the fringe of hair from my forehead, pushing my black bangs away from my eyes._

"_I was young. I was not, however, helpless."_

_For the first time, I turned my eyes toward her, looking at the face which I had been so reluctant to see after six years without doing so. She looked different than I remembered her, but I knew that was due more to the gradual distortion of memory than her actually looking any different._

_She seemed saddened at my words. I felt a moment of strange insufficiency, knowing that I would never be able to understand her feelings. As someone at the head of such a bitter and bloody legacy, I would never allow myself to know the feeling of a parent's love for their child. My mind would never be able to grasp the sheer, overwhelming guilt my mother felt for leaving me, no matter how simplistic or unnecessary that guilt may have been. Somehow, I knew I would never understand her feelings, just as she would never understand my own._

"_I'm sorry."_

"_You have nothing to apologize for, Mother. I was not alone, and sometimes I was happy."_

"_I would have you be happy more often than 'sometimes', Ciel."_

_I reached up and stole her hand, halting the motion of her fingers in my hair. Her skin felt warm under mine, something which surprised me almost as the same revelation had surprised me so long ago, in the carriage, with Sebastian._

"_The legacy that was left to me does not leave much room for happiness. And I have done my very best to sabotage what little room there was."_

"_Oh, Ciel. Don't you have a right to be happy?"_

"_I gave up that right when I promised my soul to the devil. I grew up, but there were sacrifices that I had to make in order to do it."_

_She looked down at me, disappointment painting her features._

"_Your father would be very sad to hear you say that."_

"_Father was the one who passed this burden onto me, Mother. Just as he should share some of the blame for my pain, he should understand what I had to do."_

_Her fingers curled more tightly into mine, and her legs shifted slightly underneath her lacy, white dress._

"_Your father...is not here with me."_

"_I know. That's why...I'm glad I got this one chance to talk to you again. My time is almost up."_

"_Sixteen years is too short a life, Ciel."_

_Her honeyed voice had become choked, and she wrapped her arms around me. She smelled like patchouli, the way she always used to smell, and her hair was just as soft as I remembered as it brushed the side of my face._

_As I sat there, with that scent flooding my senses, thoughts of everything that had happened in my life—everyone I had met, all the places I had been—flooded through my mind. In that moment, I came to a conclusion that perhaps I should have come to a very long time ago. Except for one regret..._

"_It was a good life."_

~-~-~

When I woke up again, the eastern sun was just beginning to peer through the curtains, bathing the room in a sort of distorted half-light, where the colors were somewhere between glorious and dead. Somehow, my dream—whether real or not—had left me with a sense of peace. The stress that had pushed me into sleep had all but evaporated, leaving me feeling refreshingly hollow, like a vase emptied of dead remnants in wait for new blooms. There were many things that I understood, now. My house was gone, all but one of my mortal servants were dead, and my life would be over soon, as well. Somehow, though, I was still happy. It was still alright.

"I thought you were going to sleep forever, Young Master."

Sebastian was sitting in the chair over by the corner, barely visible, draped in his black clothing. In the room, only the slight rustle of a pant leg crossing over another broke the silence. There was a new understanding between us, a realization that the cage in which I had kept my demon had finally been opened, and nothing remained to maintain the facade of master and servant. My revenge had been realized. Sebastian's side of the contract—to keep me alive and healthy, and to aid me in the apprehension of my parents' murderer—had been fulfilled.

"I would have, if I could. I was having a very nice dream."

"You know that dreams are fleeting."

"I know," I said, with a brief look around the room. "Did Elizabeth leave?"

His eyes seemed to capture mine for a moment, with some sort of question, or some sort some sort of challenge hidden within them that I was not capable of understanding. Now that the time had come, I was both nervous and relieved.

"Yes. Tanaka escorted her home a few hours ago. She would have liked to stay, but she rightly assumed that her parents were quite worried about her."

"...good. Good."

While the first was said somewhat weakly, the second was said with much more conviction. The truth was, I didn't want Elizabeth here. I did not love her. I did not want to marry her. I did not want her to see me get taken away.

My stomach chose that moment to protest the fact that I likely not eaten in days. The rumble was loud enough to carry across the room, and I almost thought I saw a brief smile skitter across Sebastian's face.

"Would you like something to eat, Young Master?"

Yes, I wanted to say. I would very much like something to eat. Perhaps a roast, with winter vegetables and a glass of red wine. Only a week before, I wouldn't have hesitated for even a moment, but, as I said, there had been a change in the status quo. If Sebastian wanted to feed me, then he would do so. If he did not want to, then he was under no obligation.

He must have realized this, and I can imagine that the thought must have given him an indescribable amount of pleasure. After six years, he was finally getting exactly what he had always wanted.

"I believe that Tanaka has undertaken the task of producing a meal for you. Somehow he seemed to know that you would awaken soon."

I nodded. Tanaka had always had a sixth sense when it came to me. I wondered, sometimes, where exactly my father had come across the old man, or even if it had been my father who found him at all. No matter how illogical, It didn't seem impossible that Tanaka had simply been with the Phantomhives since their beginning.

I stayed silent, wondering how we could continue with the idle conversation when we both knew well and good how it was going to end. We'd known it since the beginning. Since the moment when I first felt the softest touch of feathers, I had known how the chronicle of my life would complete itself. Neither of us knew how long we would take to reach that end, but that we would one day do so seemed inevitable. Now that the time had come, I thought it must have instilled a sense of relief in both of us. I know it did for me.

"After I finish eating, I would like an hour or so to myself," I said. It was not phrased like an order. For the first time in my relationship with Sebastian, I was forced to ask for permission.

"Of course, My Lord."

~-~-~

The meal that Tanaka had prepared for me was not a roast with tender vegetables and a glass of red wine. Instead, it was a simple stew, one which he had likely chosen due to the recipe's ability to keep while they waited for me to awaken. It was satisfying enough, but for what I believed to be my last meal, I was hoping for something a little more memorable. After all, how often had I had a bowl of Tanaka's stew over the years?

After the meal, I excused myself to my study, where I had two things to do. The first, I began by taking out a clean sheet of paper from my desk drawer, and inking up my pen.

_To My Dearest Queen Victoria,_

_For many years, I have served you. Even when I would have liked nothing better than to hide from my duty, I have never failed to do what you would ask of me. Many of the things which I have done, as I am sure you are aware, are very close to crossing the line between what is right and moral, and what is wrong. I apologize for this. Somehow, I feel as though, had I been a better servant to the Crown, I could have found different ways to do the things which you wanted me to do._

_My Queen, I say these things because the end of this long, dark road I have traveled is at hand. My house has been destroyed, and all but one of my servants has been slaughtered. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I feel the need to beg your assistance in protecting what little I do have left to my name._

_As you may know, my fiancée, the Lady Elizabeth Middleford, also resides in London, and I would beg you to look after her. I would find it highly strange if she did not find another to marry in the coming years—she is young, affluent, and very pretty—but until that time, I do not like the idea of my fiancée being as vulnerable as she likely will be. She does not have much knowledge of the true workings of the world, not that I tried particularly well to help her learn them. Her innocence is one of her more charming factors._

_I also leave behind an elderly servant, Tanaka. Without me, he will have nowhere to call home. I would ask you to take him into your household, treating him with the respect due to someone who has taken care of me when such care was much needed. I understand that I am asking you to go out of your way for someone who has likely caused you no small amount of grief in his six years of service. I am aware that I am leaving you with no heir, and no chance of continuing my family's service to you into the next generation. However, I hope that the things which I have done for you over these past six years will be enough to pay for these favors._

_Most Sincerely Yours,_

_Lord Ciel Phantomhive_

When I finished the letter, I didn't give myself a chance to change my mind. I waved the paper around lightly, drying the ink, and folded the thick sheet into an envelope I had waiting for it. With the application of my seal—an elaborate 'P', the same seal my father had used for his own correspondence—the letter was complete.

For my second task, I returned to my bedroom, only a few doors away from my study.

There were very few personal touches in the bedroom. It was where I slept, it was connected to where I bathed, and that was the extent of its usefulness. Perhaps, in a way, I was glad that my mansion had been taken away from me. You see, I had no particular connection to the townhouse. I purchased it when I was eleven, with the help of the Queen, as a way to be closer to the Crown when I was needed. Unlike my mansion, which I had received from my father's will, the townhouse had no sentimental value to me. When Sebastian would collect his debt, I would feel no sadness about leaving this dreary place behind.

The curtains were closed. Even though the sun was, by now, shining brightly outside, the bedroom was dark and shut-in, with small particles of dust floating lazily through the air. The white bedsheets somehow seemed to glow in the darkness, contrasting with the dark blue clothing I had chosen for the day. As I sat on the bed, I ran my hand over the soft cotton of the duvet, and I was comforted.

After a few moments of quiet reflection, I reached into the bedside table, pulling out the only item left in the drawer.

The golden locket was really a beautiful piece of jewelry. My aunt had given it to me when I had returned, a month after my parents had been murdered, as a belated funeral present six years ago. After I took down the portrait of my mother and father that hung in the foyer of the Phantomhive mansion, that locket contained the only remaining pictures of my parents.

I opened it with careful yet shaking fingers. It had been a very long time since I had last been able to find the courage to look inside.

My mother looked just as she had in my dream the night before. Her long, blond hair was draped over one shoulder, and her eyes were serious, yet kind. As for my father, it was much more difficult to force myself to look at his face. For the same reason that I dislike those rare moments when Her Majesty forces me to put myself in the mind of a criminal, looking at my father was like looking at myself in five years' time. In his eyes, I saw both the lie which he told the world and the truth which he hid away inside himself. In my father, I saw every problem that I, myself, had been forced to face in my work for the Queen. In the set of his shoulders, I saw the same hidden beast that I would have eventually become.

I looked so much like my father, and so little like my mother. It was a shame, really, because I would have liked to have been more like my mother, in a lot of respects.

Reaching up, I selected a single strand of my straight, black hair, and pulled it out. With the same care that had used to open the locket, I curled the hair into a small coil, put it in between the pictures, and shut the golden keepsake tightly. I filled my lungs with a deep breath, and slid its golden chain around my neck.

It was an odd weight, because I usually refused to wear jewelry of any kind, but it was alright. As I tucked it inside my shirt, I wondered if what my mother had said was really true—if there really was anything I had done in my life that she could be proud of.

~-~-~

Sebastian was waiting for me in the foyer. As I descended the steps, his eyes met mine, with the same unreadable expression that they had held earlier. There was a finality in the way which he bowed to me, both because I knew it would be the last time, and because I also knew that it was no longer inappropriate for him to refrain.

"I'm ready, Sebastian."

He looked devastatingly handsome. Standing there, in his black overcoat, with his piercing red eyes, he was more handsome than I think I had ever seen him.

"Yes, My Lord."


	8. I Promise

_A/N: So, this is it, folks. The last chapter. I know it doesn't tie everything up in nice neat bows, but I feel like it's appropriate. Thanks for coming this far with me, and for sticking around for this long. Any and all reviews will be loved and appreciated. Special thanks to MissFranky, my beloved beta for this fanfic (and also the woman who kicked my butt into action when I became unmotivated)._

_Also, I've posted the first chapter of an audiobook version of this fic on my homepage, linked to in my profile, so please go check it out. I'll continue to post the story in audiobook form if it seems like there's any interest.  
_

_Will I return with more Kuroshitsuji fanfiction in the foreseeable future? Who knows. It all depends on where the author takes us throughout the course of the manga, doesn't it?_

_Anyway, enjoy, and please review this last chapter!  
_

Chapter 8: **I**.**P**romise.

_There is no escape  
From the slave catcher's songs..._

_~-~-~_

When Sebastian opened the carriage door to escort me out of the cabin, it took me a moment to realize where he had brought us. It was a cemetery in Northeast London, Abney Park, a place which I had visited quite often as a child but only rarely after my parents had died. During the summer months, the cemetery would be filled with beautiful roses—hundreds of varieties—and visitors in droves. Now, though, in one of the last weeks of winter, the roses consisted of nothing more than dead leaves and snow.

As we walked over the meandering cobblestone walkways, between the looming headstones and grandiose funerary monuments, we did not encounter anyone else. To be completely truthful, I'm not sure how I would have reacted if we had. It seemed to me that, somehow, the moment I had stepped into the cold, gray, winter air in front of my townhouse everything other than Sebastian and me had ceased to exist. In my world, there was nothing but his straight-backed gait, and the dirty, half-melted snow that dusted the graves.

His long legs kept him a few strides in front of me, and as I walked behind him I had a small smile on my face. It seemed too predictable, much more predictable than Sebastian usually strove to be, to take me to a cemetery. It was almost tacky in its lack of creativity.

Still, I couldn't deny the beauty of the graveyard. My mother, who brought me here whenever we had the chance during one of my father's business trips into London, had cultivated within me the idea that something didn't have to be frightening or distasteful simply because of a proximity to the dead. The roses which bloomed within the perimeter of the high, black gates, _were_ beautiful, she said, but only because the dead watched over them, and took care of the delicate buds to relieve their boredom. Even now that I have a much more sophisticated and well-rounded understanding of the afterlife, I'm thankful that my mother took the time to soothe my fear of death.

The cemetery was massive. I have no idea exactly how big it was, but I based my conviction on the fact that I had never seen all of it. No matter how many times I had visited in my youth, no matter how many picnics had been packed, I had never seen everything there was to see. It seemed to go on forever, path after path, flanked by imposing statues of praying saints, or huge, embellished crosses. Compared to the small plot of burial land back at the Phantomhive mansion, this was completely overwhelming.

"Sebastian?"

My voice seemed to rip through the peaceful silence, and I grimaced. He stopped, turned around, met my single uncovered eye with his red irises.

"Yes?"

Somehow, we had come to a halt underneath a huge weeping willow, its naked branches drooping down like the thin, gray hair of an ancient woman. After we had left the house, the winter sun had hidden behind a curtain of overcast cloud, and the tree cut off what little sunlight was left.

"I left a letter to Her Majesty. On my desk. After...after, would you make sure that it gets delivered to her?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Of course."

"Thank you," I said. I felt my confidence return, for a moment, and I took that moment to ask him where we were going.

Of course, I knew where we were most likely headed. The center-point of the cemetery was a massive cathedral, complete with turrets and holy statues, and I would be very surprised if Sebastian were to miss the opportunity for such poetic justice. I'm not sure I even knew what it was exactly, that I was asking. Maybe I just wanted to hear his voice.

"Where would you like to go?"

I suddenly remembered a spot, deep in the heart of the cemetery. My mother and I had stumbled across it once, but had been unable to find it again when we returned to London a couple of months later. It had been a beautiful spot, and I remembered it so clearly, even then, what had to be almost a decade later. I would have liked to return to that spot, but even if I had known how to get there, I wouldn't know how to ask.

Instead, I simply shrugged dispassionately.

"It's not really my choice, is it?"

He was quiet for a moment, and though I can't be sure since my eyes were glued to the rough, uneven stones of the ground, I think he was watching me.

"I brought you here because, of all the things on this earth I have seen, this place in the winter is the most beautiful."

Looking around, I didn't find it hard to agree with him. The soft covering of frost that blanketed everything somehow made it all glow. Even the knowledge that we were utterly surrounded by rotting corpses didn't seem to take away from the beauty of the land.

"I suppose it's nice enough. I used to come here with my mother," I said.

"I know," he replied.

~-~-~

We walked for what felt like hours. Hell, as far as I knew, it could have been. Time seemed to have stopped, somehow, and the omnipresent cloud cover didn't help matters. After a while, I absently began to wonder if we were even in the cemetery any more, or if we hadn't just walked right out the gates some time before, and continued on out of London. It might have been better that way, I thought.

The longer we walked, the more depressed I seemed to become. I had told my mother that it was a good life, that I was alright with who I had become, that I didn't regret the way things had turned out, but that wasn't exactly the case. _Except for one regret_, I had thought, and that one regret seemed to overshadow everything else. It was like an elephant trailing balefully after me, as I walked between the graves, that I was desperately, _futilely_, trying to ignore.

That one regret, the one that was completely, utterly screwing _everything _up, was the ridiculous feelings I had developed for my satanic butler. Because, somehow, that one regret was suddenly multiplying into hundreds, thousands of them. Suddenly I was regretting that I had never asked after his own welfare, or given him a day off, or shown him that I had even a single ounce of affection for him. I regretted waiting for so long to show Sebastian the Ciel Phantomhive that he could respect, the one that should have been there all along.

Could demons feel love?

I regretted never taking the chance to find out.

I knew, both from my own experience and from watching how the rest of the world reacted to my butler, that he was inhumanly handsome. Of course, that was to be expected. He had chosen this form—or perhaps, I had chosen it for him, subconsciously—when he had come to be known as my butler, and he would have been a fool not to choose an appealing one. Still, for some reason I knew my attraction to him was in spite of his beauty, not because of it.

I had made the cardinal mistake, broken the cardinal rule. In a life where Sebastian only looked after me because he had promised he would do so, I had managed to convince myself that he cared for me. I had planted hope within my deserted emotional sphere, and it was thriving much, much too well.

Abney Park Cemetery wasn't all that old, even compared to the Phantomhive Family Cemetery. Unlike the huge plots of land that had dotted the countryside for hundreds of years, Abney Park was filled with dead bodies that had likely not yet been forgotten. None of the graves seemed old enough to be ignored, yet. Even so, the names passed by in a blur, as I read them without giving them much of a second thought.

_William Burroughs, 1801-1888_

_Francis Friedrich, 1798-1845_

_Sarah Cavanaugh, 1860-1865_

_Oliver Heinrick, 1800-1850_

_Gertrude Lovette, 1813-1879_

I could almost imagine passing by my own name, etched carefully into white marble, carved there by those who knew me but wouldn't understand that the marble really should have been black instead.

_Ciel Phantomhive, 1875-1892_

Almost without me noticing, we passed by the cathedral.

~-~-~

I broke out of my stupor when I carelessly ran into Sebastian's back. My nose was instantly assaulted by the smell of wool and the harsh lye soap that he must have used, combined with the itchy softness of his jacket. I looked around me, and was instantly hit with a memory, of a quiet summer afternoon, with just my mother, me, and a carefully and lovingly packed picnic basket.

"_Look, Honey! Tanaka made you lemon cake, your favorite! Oh, and ham, too. Look how spoiled you are."_

"_This is great!"_

_"Oh, Ciel, come here...how you always manage to get food on your nose I have no idea. Hand me that napkin, will you?"_

The clearing was simple. It looked natural, but was most likely engineered to look that way by whoever had originally laid out the cemetery. There were a few dense trees, creating a sort of private oasis, where you could look out at the world outside but it seemed like no one could see you in return. A small, gentle creek, half-frozen in the winter air, flowed through one end, and a small stone bench crouched next to it. The bench had lent its cool, stone surface as the perfect refuge from the summer sun for me and my mother, and now it sat there like some sacrificial alter in the dim light.

It started out as a sort of spasm, a quick, repeated exhale of breath that somehow turned into full-on laughter. I clutched my stomach, and I could feel my muscles contract under the force of the air leaving my lungs. As I looked at that stupid bench, all of the emotions that had been trapped inside of me for the past six years spilled out, like wine from a bottle with a broken bottom.

Even as I laughed, tears began streaming down my face, and my legs gave out from under me, and I didn't care that the dirt floor of the clearing was getting all over my clothing. In that moment, if someone had asked me what I was feeling, I don't know that I would have been able to answer. I was both horribly sad, and impossibly happy, and I felt that some great burden, like a giant boulder, was being lifted from my shoulders. If my life were to end, as I knew it was going to, I wanted it to end here. How Sebastian knew about this place, I have no idea, but I don't think it was a coincidence that he took me to _that_ clearing, in _that_ cemetery, on _that _day.

He picked me up. The feeling of his hands gently but firmly gripping my shoulders helped me pull myself together a little bit, but the cathartic feeling within me did not cease. As he carried me over to the bench, I didn't feel anything but relief.

For a long time, he said nothing. He knelt down on one knee in front of me, a position that I had seen him in more times than I cared to count. When standing next to me, his collarbone stood level with my eyes, but when he knelt like that, he became the short one. As his eyes locked with mine, he reached into his jacket, buttoned to keep out the cold that I still wasn't even sure he could feel. From inside the depths of black, he pulled out a familiar object, one that I had all but forgotten about because of the horrible memories associated with it.

The knife usually slept in the bedside table at the townhouse. I kept it there, because I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it, yet I didn't want it in the house where I spent most of my time. Every now and then, when I saw it, I would remember that day, and my eye would pulse with the phantom pain. I should have noticed that it was gone that morning, when I had removed the locket from the same drawer, but I hadn't.

After all, over the years I'd been _hoping_ the knife would simply disappear.

It wasn't a normal knife, a knife that one could take with them on a fishing outing or keep in their pocket to ward off the unsavory people who frequented the London alleys at night. It wasn't even my knife, really. The funny thing about it was that it belonged, in fact, to David Wright, the man who had ruined me so many years ago.

That wasn't the reason, however, that I kept the knife. Nor was it because of the obviously fine craftsmanship—the handle made of mahogany and a pattern of inlaid jade, and the finely tempered steel blade which could be stored, with a flick and a twist, inside the handle—or the fact that it had likely been very expensive. No, I had kept the knife because it was this very knife that Sebastian had used to cut the contract, with searingly hot steel, into the skin of his left hand.

Again, I had foolishly believed that none of my servants knew my secrets, but Sebastian always knew, somehow.

"Young Master," he said, putting the knife on the cold stone of the bench to be temporarily forgotten. "When he thinks about his lord, do you know what a loyal servant worries about the most?"

I shook my head.

"He worries that his lord does not understand the depth of his devotion to him. He worries that all of the things he does are brushed aside, because it is believed that they were simply done out of a sense of duty. He worries that his lord will never see that a less devoted servant would never go as far as he has gone."

He looked away from me, then, breaking the eye contact that he had maintained for several minutes. I felt as though, with his movement, I had broken out of the spell which he had cast over me. I saw in his eyes, for the first time ever, a naked emotion, not faked, nor imagined.

"And the servant realizes that there is only one way to prove that the love he feels for his master is more than just duty. He realizes that the lord will only understand if the servant sacrifices something of himself, not because he was asked to, but because he wants to."

He picked up the knife again, deftly flipping open the blade. It glowed dully in the dim light of the clearing, and I thought I could see the remnants of Sebastian's dried blood from so long ago on the metal, although the logical part of my brain told me it was impossible. As I watched him, he pulled the white kid-glove from his left hand and tossed it to the ground. The sign of the contract was starkly highlighted against his pale skin, seemingly a brighter red than it usually was. It had almost regressed to its original state—blood red and sinister.

Placing the point of the blade on the back of his hand, he slowly drew it across the seal, all the way from where the skin of his hand met the skin of his wrist to the first joint of his thumb. As the blade glided along his hand, the tissue parted deeply, leaving a fissure of gaping flesh. Blood began to seep out of the wound, until the rivulets of crimson had utterly drowned the seal.

The knife clattered to the ground, and he reached his hand up to my face. The smell of the blood was probably very strong, fresh and thick, as close as it was to my nose, but I couldn't smell it. My eyes had caught his again, and his usually arrogant red irises were sad.

"So, My Lord, when you asked me to kiss you, I did not refuse because I wanted to do so. I refused because I wanted to kiss you while acting freely, when it was not an order."

His lips pressed against mine—gently, warmly. The feeling of them contrasted with the feeling of his blood dripping hotly down my face, and with the tears which had begun to seep from my eyes again. It was so bitter sweet—so _God damn _bitter sweet—that I think a part of me died. Because, even though it was what I had always wanted, it felt so much like a goodbye that I wanted to scream, and yell, and cry to the world to ask how life could so often be so unfair.

His hand curled in my hair, tugging off my eye-patch with gentle fingers.

"I regret that I cannot rid you of the contract, My Lord. It will always be there."

I tried to tell him that I was glad for it. Even though I could see the intent to leave in his eyes, that ugly, unnatural contract would serve to remind me that he had been there, that Sebastian, the man I had loved, hadn't been a simple figment of a traumatized boy's imagination.

I felt something warm touch my palm, and when I looked down, I could see his plain, silver pocketwatch through the haze of my tears, the metal warmed with the radiant heat of his body.

"Why...why are you giving me this, Sebastian?" My voice, which had deserted me before, chose that moment to return, with strangled words and choked sounds.

"Because," he said, trailing his bloody hand down the side of my face, "I will not need it where I am going."

He stood up, then, and smiled a true smile for the first time. His knees were dusted with a thin layer of dirt, and his blood had run all down the sleeve of his usually immaculate overcoat. Even so, somehow, in that moment, he seemed happy, and it made the tears run down my face all the more freely.

"Sebastian, I..."

I tried to say something, anything, but my words had disappeared again. He was too perfect, really, for anything I would say to have any meaning. I, Ciel Phantomhive, understood for the first time that I was not special, and that some things were simply too beautiful to keep locked away inside a cage—that this wonderful, horrible, _beautiful _man in front of me was one such thing.

As he walked away from me, the stone that had been placed inside my chest became a live, beating heart again, and I couldn't pretend that the feeling was not utter agony.

"Goodbye, Ciel," he said.

~-~-~


End file.
